Vida Lahey
Beyond 'Monday Morning'
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1321816600005419Keywords:
Queensland Art Gallery, 'Vida Lahey: Colour and Modernism', 'Monday Morning', painting, Brisbane art sceneAbstract
Some ofthe guests at the opening of the Queensland Art Gallery's exhibition Vida Lahey: Colour and Modernism on 16 October 2010 expressed their consternation when Lahey's most famous work, Monday Morning, was not included. Despite it being one of the icons of the Gallery's collection, it remained on display in the permanent collection galleries - a choice that was quite deliberate. Monday Morning is a striking, large figurative work, which has been displayed since it was donated to the Gallery by the Queensland poet, Emily Coungeau, after the Queensland Art Society's (QAS) Annual Exhibition in 1912. It was a clear sign that the artist, then aged 30 years and who had been exhibiting with the Society since 1902, was an established presence on the Brisbane art scene.
References
Sun, Four o'clock, 19 October 1912.
Lilian MacArthur, 'Vida Lahey', The Society of Women Writers of NSW Literary Competition, 1969, typescript Fryer Library, University of Queensland, 9.
'Art Notes: Miss F.Y. Lahey's Paintings', The Age, Melbourne, 22 May 1923: 14.
Vida Lahey, Art for All (Brisbane: Queensland National Art Gallery for the Combined Art Committee of Queensland, c. 1946).
Unidentified press cutting, Georges Gallery Exhibition, Melbourne c. 17 June 1947.
William Moore, 'Art and Artists', The Brisbane Courier, 25 October 1930: 20.
Argus, 17 August 1932, quoted in Christopher Wray, Arthur Streeton: Painter of Light (Brisbane: Jacaranda, 1993), 172-73.
Arthur Streeton, 'Miss Vida Lahey's Art: Oils and Water-Colours: Distinguished Flower Painting', Argus, 19 October 1932: 5.
Professor C.G. Cooper, 'Interest Varies in Art Show', Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 21 April 1949.
