Awakening: Four Lives in Art

When Ibsen's controversial play A Doll's House opened to packed audiences at Melbourne's Princes Theatre, the slam of the door as Nora left her husband in the final act echoed in the minds of thousands of young Australian women. This book is about four of these women, born in Victoria between 1867 and 1893, who lived through the changes which swept across life, culture and art during the early twentieth century. Four short biographies trace their parallel lives. From Rome, Dora Ohlfsen established a career as a celebrated sculptor. With Mussolini's support, she became the only expatriate sculptor in Italy commissioned with a national war memorial. Significantly, her Anzac medal was the first commemorative work of art memorialising the Anzacs. From Paris, Louise Dyer invigorated music publishing and recording, helping to transform musical culture world-wide. Her label Les Editions de L'Oiseau-Lyre laid the foundations of the modern early music revival and helped shape the notion of 'authenticity' in musical performance. From London, Clarice Zander promoted cultural understanding as a curator and as the publicist for the Royal Academy.
She pioneered the modern marketing of art and curated Australia's first important exhibition of contemporary British art. From New York, Mary Cecil Allen, painter, critic, and educator, working at the centre of modern art, inspired many. She ran the first touring exhibition of contemporary Australian art in the United States. Modern women of the arts, they awoke to their full potential and created opportunities for others to do likewise.