Agnes Goodsir

Born in Portland, Victoria in 1864, Goodsir wouldn’t begin her formal training until the age of 34 when she enrolled at the Bendigo School of Mines, and later continued her education at the National Gallery School in Melbourne. Influenced by the artist Arthur Woodward, her tutor while in Bendigo, she travelled to the United Kingdom and France at the dawn of the twentieth century, eventually settling in Paris where she took classes at the Académie Delécluse, the Académie Colarossi and the Académie Julian, and immersed herself in the city’s cosmopolitan artistic milieu.

Working between Paris and London, her works were exhibited in high-profile shows at the New Salon, the Salon des Indépendants and the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris, as well as at the Royal Academy and the Royal Institute in London.

After fleeing Paris for London at the onset of the First World War, Goodsir then returned to Paris in 1921 with her companion and muse, Scottish artist Rachel Dunn, who continued to be depicted in many of her paintings.

In 1926, Goodsir was made a member of France’s Société Nationale des Beaux Arts, one of few Australians to receive the honour, and, the following year, temporarily returned to Australia. Having brought a large selection of her work, she was heavily featured in solo exhibitions in both Melbourne and Sydney.

Working primarily as a portrait painter, she masterfully avoided overt theatricality, she instead conveyed intimacy and psychological presence through restrained composition and careful observation. While grounded in academic traditions, her work also reflects the influence of modern French painting, particularly in its looser brushwork and atmospheric handling of colour and light.

Throughout her life, Goodsir maintained close personal and professional relationships within international artistic networks, including a long-term partnership with Dunn. Their shared life in Paris placed Goodsir within a broader community of independent women artists whose careers challenged conventional gender roles and expanded opportunities for female creative practitioners. Although discreetly framed within the conventions of her era, these relationships contributed to the intellectual and emotional richness of her work.

Despite exhibiting successfully in Paris, London and Australia during her lifetime, Goodsir’s contribution was for many years overlooked within dominant narratives of Australian Modernism. In recent decades, however, renewed scholarly and curatorial attention has recognised her as an important figure in both Australian and international queer art history, and her paintings are now held in major public collections, including the National Gallery of Australia and state galleries throughout the country.