Portia Mary Bennett (28 January 1898 – 1 May 1989) was an Australian artist. The daughter of William Albert Bennett, a harbour pilot from London, and Portia Bohannah Booth, born in Australia, she was born in Balmain, a suburb of

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

. Her father drowned while she was still young. She was educated at Fort Street Girls' High School and then studied with

Antonio Dattilo Rubbo Antonio Salvatore Dattilo Rubbo (Napoli 21 June 1870 – Sydney 1 June 1955) was an Italian-born artist and art teacher active in Australia from 1897. Rubbo, or Dattilo-Rubbo, was born in Naples in 1870, and spent his early childhood in the N ...

at the school of the Art Society of New South Wales. She attended the

Sydney Teachers' College The Sydney Teachers College was a tertiary education institution that trained school teachers in Sydney, Australia. It existed from 1906 until the end of 1981, when it became the Sydney Institute of Education, a part of the new Sydney College of ...

, studying art there with May Marsden. She also attended the

Julian Ashton Art School The Julian Ashton Art School was established by Julian Ashton in 1890 as the "Academy Julian", (perhaps a reference to the Académie Julian in Paris) has been an influential art school in Australia. For a long time it was known as the Sydney Art ...

. She taught at Chatswood Intermediate School and Darlington Public School and then, from 1921 to 1925, was on the teaching staff of the Sydney Teachers' College. In 1933, she was a founding member of the Perth Society of Artists. In 1925, she married William Henry James Wallace, a marine engineer, and moved to

Brisbane Brisbane ( ; ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and largest city of the States and territories of Australia, state of Queensland and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia, with a ...

with him. In 1932, they moved to

Perth Perth () is the list of Australian capital cities, capital city of Western Australia. It is the list of cities in Australia by population, fourth-most-populous city in Australia, with a population of over 2.3 million within Greater Perth . The ...

. The couple had four children. She worked mainly in

watercolour Watercolor (American English) or watercolour ( Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin 'water'), is a painting method"Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to the ...

, painting outdoors. Her subjects included boats, landscapes and cityscapes of Perth. She was particularly interested in the architecture of the city, as well as scenes of urban life. Bennett won the watercolour prize from the Perth Society of Artists in 1951 and, in 1952, was awarded the Claude Hotchin Art Prize for watercolour. The

University of Western Australia University of Western Australia (UWA) is a public research university in the Australian state of Western Australia. The university's main campus is in Crawley, Western Australia, Crawley, a suburb in the City of Perth local government area. UW ...

held a retrospective of her work in 1986. She died at home in Nedlands, a suburb of Perth, at the age of 91. Her work is held in the collections of the

National Gallery of Australia The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...

, the

Art Gallery of Western Australia The Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) is a public art gallery that is part of the Perth Cultural Centre, in Perth. It is located near the Western Australian Museum and State Library of Western Australia and is supported and managed by the ...

and the

Holmes à Court Gallery The Holmes à Court Gallery is an art gallery in Western Australia. It has two locations—a gallery located in the original Vasse Felix winery at Cowaramup (near Margaret River) and another in West Perth. It is owned by Janet Holmes à Court. ...

. In 2005, some of her artworks were included in an exhibition of images of Perth over the years which was held at the Perth town hall.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bennett, Portia Mary 1898 births 1989 deaths 20th-century Australian painters Artists from Sydney Australian watercolourists Julian Ashton Art School alumni 20th-century Australian women painters Women watercolorists