State of the artist
BLANKLY SHE stared straight ahead. Eyes red, cheeks stained by drying tears, anger and sadness combining in that now familiar way. How could such injustice be rewarded? How would she bear such public humiliation, such assault on her life’s work, such financial cost?
Brushes and a palette took her gaze, a half-finished portrait of Dame Enid Lyons smiled down at her unsympathetically. Sketches and stretched canvasses reminded her of the work which had piled up in recent weeks and flowers dying in a cracked vase symbolised the hopes she had lost. For hours she waited in her studio, pacing at times, sobbing uncontrollably at others, hoping for a consoling friend to arrive but nobody came.
Thus occupied her studio in the headquarters of the Royal Art Society at 26 Hunter Street, Sydney, on the afternoon of Tuesday 8 November 1944. Earlier that day of the Supreme Court of New South Wales had ruled against Edwards and her co-informant, fellow artist , in what had been billed as one of the trials of the century: the legal attempt to overthrow the decision to award the Archibald Prize of 1943 to for his painting of friend and fellow artist (see The build-up to the court case had occupied most of 1944 with Mary Edwards emerging as the leading
