Elsie Barlow


Elsie Frederica Barlow, was an Australian painter and printmaker. She was a founding member of Twenty Melbourne Painters. She was also the first woman to have a solo exhibition in Castlemaine, Victoria.

Biography

Elsie Frederica Barlow née Hake was born in 1876 in Melbourne, Australia.
In 1894, Barlow enrolled at the Gallery School of Design where she was taught by Frederick McCubbin and Lindsay Bernard Hall. She attended the Gallery School with her sister Dora Serle.
In 1901 she married Arthur Barlow, who died in 1917. They had three children, one of whom died a few months after birth.
In 1912 Barlow held a one woman show at the Mechanics' Institute in Castlemaine, where she displayed 90 paintings. This led to the eventual creation of the Castlemaine Art Gallery.
Barlow was a founding member of the Twenty Melbourne Painters Society.
Barlow died in a private hospital in Mentone, Victoria on 15 November 1948.

Legacy

Retrospectives of her works were held in 1977 and 1978 to honour her as one of the founders of the Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historic Museum.
Hacke Place in the Canberra suburb of Conder is named in her honour and that of her older sister Dora, the misspelling of their maiden name being gazetted in 1988.