Eirene Mort: Artist, Artisan and New Woman

Abstract

Eirene Mort: Artist, Artisan and New Woman Eirene Mort (1879 – 1977) was an Arts and Crafts practitioner and teacher whose work reflected transitions in twentieth century Australian art and culture, and in the opportunities available to women artists in changing patterns of taste, art markets and education. This thesis examines the factors that shaped Mort’s career and contribution as a – for a time – prominent artist and artisan who was emblematic of independent womanhood. I assess the ways in which her struggles and achievements extend our understanding of the significance of gender in the art world of twentieth century Australia. Analysing Mort’s wide-ranging body of art, together with her memoirs, family histories, financial documents, teaching records, social networks and contemporary reports of her life and work, I draw out the patterns that emerged in her life and work. Mort’s significance as an historical figure is twofold. Firstly, the course of her long career illustrates the interdependency of art with a range of social and political influences, including gendered identities, patronage, education, class-based networks and aesthetic movements. Secondly, the relative neglect of Mort’s work highlights the importance of restoring these dimensions to studies of artists in their context, and of dissolving an often-artificial distinction between ‘art’ and a range of craft- based practices in their social contexts. My biographical approach is informed by methodologies using qualitative and quantitative data – often fragmentary, but revealing even in that state – to reconstruct the social and personal contexts of her art practice, and to relate her work to changes in taste, patronage and education, and placing Mort in the wider cultural social, and economic patterns of her times.