Caroline Simpson Collection

Painted portrait miniature of Leslie Walford, 1929 / Gladys Osborne

Osborne, Gladys Daphne, 1882-1957.

1929

1 watercolour on celluloid : 8 x 6.5 cm

Signed and dated on image lower left: Gladys / Osborne / 1929.

portraits
miniatures
Walford, Leslie Nicholl, 1927-2012.

Leslie Walford papers

As Gladys Laycock, the artist Gladys Osborne was a well-known Australian miniaturist in the early decades of the twentieth century. She was born in Newtown, Sydney, in November 1882, studied art in London and Paris as a young woman and around 1905 set up a studio in George Street, Sydney, where she painted miniatures on commission. She was a regular exhibitor with the Royal Art Society with the Art Gallery of NSW buying examples of her work from the 1913, 1914, 1916, 1919 and 1922 exhibitions. She also exhibited with the Society of Women Painters and at the Women's Industrial Art Society exhibition in 1935. After her marriage to grazier D'Arcy Osborne in September 1925 Gladys and her husband kept a country home at Bredbo Station near Michelago in the Monaro region of New South Wales while maintaining close contact with society circles in Sydney. Gladys returned to live in Sydney following her husband's death in 1931, continued to paint miniatures and listed herself as an 'artist' in electoral rolls.
This miniature has been painted from a photograph taken by Alan Row Studios of Sydney in 1929.

Mossgreen auctions, Sydney, 18 November 2010: The estate of Leslie Walford, part of lot 286.

Megan Martin: 'Gladys Osborne's portrait miniatures' in Australiana, May 2017, p.6

Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection ; Walford/P/8

You may save or print this image for research and study. If you wish to use it for any other purposes, you must contact Museums of History NSW to request permission.

Picture

51227