Edith L Holmes WN Holmes, Esq

This portrait by Edith Holmes of her father, William Nassau Holmes (1860–1940), hung in the dining room of the artist’s home in Hobart until it was donated to Devonport Regional Gallery in Tasmania after Edith’s death.

Edith Holmes was a teenager when her family settled in Hobart. Her parents were interested in art and encouraged Holmes’ early passion for drawing, enrolling her into Hobart Technical School in 1918, where she learned tonal painting under Lucien Dechaineux. Another instructor, Mildred Lovett, taught her the modernist principles of colour and light, and suggested she spend a year at Julian Ashton’s Sydney Art School, where she met artists Thea Proctor and George Lambert. Returning to Hobart, Holmes joined Lovett and Florence Rodway in their city studio, and was a founding member of the Tasmanian Group of Painters. She exhibited regularly in Melbourne and Sydney.

This portrait of Holmes’ father, during his 75th year, was painted upon her return from Sydney. William was born in Ireland and studied at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in England. Athletic and well-educated, he arrived in Tasmania in the 1880s, becoming a teacher, and later headmaster of the Burnie, West Devonport and Moonah State schools.