Paris to Monaro

The award-winning, Paris to Monaro was first produced to accompany a smash hit exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra in 2013. This second edition brings the studio, its exotic contents, its idiosyncratic inhabitant, its bright artworks and an endearing miscellany of visitors, neighbours, children, nannies and animals to vivid life once again. The young Australian artist Hilda Rix went to Europe at the beginning of 1907, hankering to learn. For some fifteen years she lived and worked in London, Paris, Etaples and Morocco. There were good times, artistic success and dress-up parties.

There was sorrow, too, typical of the times, as her mother and sister succumbed to typhus and her new husband was butchered at the Western Front. Returning to Sydney to heal in the sun, she took an ambitious automobile tour before she met a grazier, also a veteran, Edgar Wright. In 1928 she moved to his property, Knockalong, near the town of Delegate on the bleached plains of the Southern Monaro region of New South Wales. In the flower-filled garden she created at Knockalong, Hilda Rix designed a studio, loosely French Provincial in style, as big as a country church with a massive fireplace, huge windows, a soaring ceiling, a loft and a stage.

About the Author

Dr. Sarah Engledow was appointed Historian at the National Portrait Gallery in 1999. Currently the Gallery’s second-longest-serving staff member, she has written more than sixty articles on portraiture and curated or co-curated the exhibitions Arcadia sound of the sea (2014), Paris to Monaro: Pleasures from the studio of Hilda Rix Nicholas (2013), Jenny Sages: Paths to portraiture (2011), Idle Hours (2009), Open Air (2008, with Andrew Sayers and Wally Caruana), The World of Thea Proctor (2005, with Andrew Sayers), Australia and the Nobel Prize (2003) and the National Photographic Portrait Prizes of 2014 and 2011. In the Gallery’s first decade Sarah wrote most of the proposals for the acquisition of works for the collection, and many hundreds of biographical captions to portraits in the collection and temporary exhibitions.

She has spoken frequently about portraiture in a very wide range of situations and forums. Recipient of the University Medal in English from ANU in 1995, she obtained her doctorate in Literature in 2003. She also holds an Associate Diploma in Fashion (Design). In the 1980s she worked in fashion retail, as a dressmaker and as a school sewing teacher. Born in Canberra Hospital, she has only ever lived in the adjoining suburbs of Yarralumla, Red Hill, Deakin and Hughes; has travelled infrequently, narrowly and reluctantly; and rarely reads books she has not read before. She is the mother of two hale sons. Her interests include gardening; flower-arranging; and clipping her dog to resemble figures in Australian history, including Governor Phillip, Justice Windeyer and Billy McMahon.