Dear Kate
The creative lives of the three Mitchell women you are meeting in this exhibition – a mother and two daughters – lasted from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. In Dear Kate, The Vision of the Mitchell Women, artist Jane Giblin guides us to our “site of enchantment”. It is here, writer Marina Warner argues, that we find the key to knowledge and understanding…
S.E.E.M. Rides
Caleb and George Squat by the creek
Dear Kate mounts her horse from a wooden stump
George Pennefather Leaps
Go Round
He was wading and calling for Caleb
He was waiting by the track
K.P.M. Steps across
My mother is sitting on a tussock
S.E.E.M. and Kate
Sarah at the Tiller
Sarah Falls from Trotter
Sarah's Big Glove
She looks across a landscape
She will ride off into the bush
Sunshine and Mark Septimus and the She Oaks
The family roo dog
The ladies in the cart were falling
The man lost his hat
Watercolours
The Mitchell women show us their lives in very different ways: Catherine Augusta and Sarah’s works were more typical of the colonial society’s expectations – pencil drawings or picturesque watercolour scenes to send home or share with friends. Kate, the irrepressible storyteller, ignored such conventions and penned visceral images of daily family life and community events rarely found in our history books and certainly not by women. Like many colonial-born girls of their station, she received what was called an “ornamental education” with a governess, along with drawing lessons in Melbourne and Hobart.
Extract from More Than Ornamental by Delia Nicholls
The Reverend Mr John Aubrey and Mrs Catherine Penwarne Ball, 1877
2023
1875 SEEM & Kate
2022
Caleb and George squat by the creek
2022
Catherine Augusta sits apart
2022
Come on!
2022
Fisherman Williams at the oars
2022
go - roouund
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Kate's roo dog and the roo
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Kate stepping across
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Kate mounts her horse from the stump
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Mark Septimus and his gun and Caleb and a roo dog
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Mr W. Shaw being thrown into the hop bin
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Oliver grabs the sappling
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Sarah at the rudder
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Sarah falling off Trotter
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Sheep hunting without a saddle
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Taken 9.2, 1875
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Watching me beat Caleb
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Kate's roo dog and the roo
2022
