Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1869 Hawthorn, Melbourne, Australia

Died: 1955 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1900

Other name/s: Dora Meeson Coates, Dora Coates

Biography

Painter Dora Meeson was born in Hawthorn, Melbourne, Australia in 1869, the daughter of John Thomas Meeson, then a schoolmaster, later a barrister, and his wife Amelia (née Kipling). She grew up in New Zealand, then attended the National Gallery School in Melbourne, Australia in 1895, also studying intermittently in London at the Slade School of Fine Art, under Henry Tonks, between 1896 and 1898, and then in Paris at the Académie Julian from 1898-99. During her time in France, she became engaged to fellow Australian artist George James Coates (1869–1930), and they moved to England in 1900, but could not afford to marry until some three years later in June 1903. The couple settled in Ealing, west London, for several years, before moving to Chelsea, to be nearer to the centre of the art world. Here they joined an extensive circle of Australian expatriate artists including Tom Roberts, George Lambert, Ruby Lindsay, Bess Norris and Ola Cohn and their studio, at 52 and 55 Glebe Place, became a hub for social and political functions including large parties and private views of their work.

In 1907 Meeson subscribed to the Women's Social and Political Union and, through the suffrage movement, befriended Mary Lowndes and Christiana Herringham, co-founder of the Society of Painters in Tempera. Meeson later became a member of the Artists' Suffrage League and a socialist and joined the Women's Freedom League as soon as it was formed. In 1907 she won a poster competition organised by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and the Artists' Suffrage League, subsequently painting the 1908 London suffrage march union banner and designing posters and postcards to publicise similar marches. In 1909 she contributed powerful (and now very scarce) line drawings to the Artists' Suffrage League publications Beware! A Warning to Suffragists and A.B.C. of Politics for Women Politicians. To earn money, Meeson and her husband contributed black and white illustrations to Dr. H. S. Williams's Historians' History of the World and the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Aware that their exclusion from the Chelsea Arts Club prevented women from accessing competitive professional commissions, Meeson undertook such commissions whenever she could, and forced the inclusion of women artists in the competition to decorate Chelsea Town Hall in 1912. She fought actively against the pervasive prejudice that if women were to paint, then they should restrict themselves to demure subjects befitting their domestic experience, choosing instead to depict labouring and shipping scenes on the River Thames; a political act, in which she laid claim to subjects traditionally reserved for men. This included going out on a boat in all weathers and battling against storm clouds and prevailing winds in order to paint active views of the river at firsthand, rather than settling for a 'tame' view from the riverbank (several of these drawings were acquired after 1945 by the Port of London Authority). When the First World War broke out, aware of the serious deprivations undergone by many women left behind on the British homefront, she helped to establish the Women's Police Volunteers to assist financially desperate women, who were often forced into prostitution. In 1919 she was honoured by becoming the first Australian woman artist to be admitted to the Royal Institute of Oil Painters in London.

In 1921, Meeson and Coates returned to Australia, where they held multiple exhibitions in Melbourne and other cities. Ever the entrepreneur, she discovered that her English scenes of the Thames sold very well in Australia, while her Australian scenes sold equally well back in England, and obligingly completed a whole series of Australian landscapes while touring Victoria, before the couple returned to England. After the death of her husband, George, in 1930, Meeson continued to paint and to exhibit throughout the decade. During the Second World War, she painted a series of watercolours depicting the damage caused by the German bombing of Chelsea (now in the collection of the Australian War Memorial museum). Meeson died in Chelsea, London, England in 1955. A representation of her design for the suffrage banner was used on a 2003 Australian commemorative dollar coin to celebrate the centenary of women's suffrage. Her work is in UK collections including the Imperial War Museum, the Museum of London Docklands, and the National Army Museum, and extensively represented in Australian collections including in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.

Related books

C. Wright, You Daughters of Freedom: The Australians Who Won the Vote and Inspired the World (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2018)
K. McKay, Shimmering Light: Dora Meeson and the Thames (Castlemaine: Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum, 2013)
M. Scott, How Australia Led the Way: Dora Meeson Coates and British Suffrage (Australia: Office for Women, 2003)
C. Speck, Painting Ghosts: Australian Women Artists in Wartime (St Leonards: Craftsman House, 2003)
V. Hammond and J. Peers (eds.), Completing the Picture: Women Artists and the Heidelberg Era (Hawthorn East: Artmoves, 1992)
M. Scott, The Art of George James Coates, 1869–1930 and Dora Meeson Coates, 1869–1955 (MA Thesis, University of Melbourne, 1992)
Dora Meeson (1869–1955) and George Coates (1869–1930) (East Malvern: Jim Alexander Gallery, 1984)
D. Coates, George Coates. His Art and Life (London: Dent, 1937)

Public collections

Related organisations

National Gallery School, Melbourne (student)
Slade School of Fine Art, London (student)
Académie Julian, Paris (student)
Royal Institute of Oil Painters (member)
Artists' Suffrage League (member)
Women's Police Volunteers, London (founder)

Selected exhibitions

Shimmering Light: Dora Meeson and the Thames, Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum, Castlemaine, Australia (2013)
Completing the Picture: Women Artists and the Heidelberg Era, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, Australia
Carrick Hill, Springfield, Australia and elsewhere around the country (1992)
Dora Meeson (1869–1955) and George Coates (1869–1930), Jim Alexander Gallery, Malvern East, Melbourne, Australia (1984)
Dora Meeson (Mrs. George J. Coates): Paintings, Including Some Works by the Late George J. Coates, Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours, London (1950)
Exhibition of Oil Paintings, Watercolours and Etchings by Dora Meeson, Fine Art Society's Gallery, Melbourne (1934)
Royal Society of Portrait Painters: 34th Exhibition (1924)
Royal Academy: 156th Exhibition (1924), 154th Exhibition (1922)
Paintings by George J. Coates and Dora Meeson (Mrs. Geo. J. Coates), Athenaeum Hall, Melbourne (1921)
War and Peace Exhibition Including War Pictures Painted for and Lent by the Commonwealth of Australia (1918)
Paintings of George Coates and Dora Meeson (Mrs. Coates), Athenaeum Art Gallery, Melbourne (1913)
Franco-British Exhibition, Shepherd's Bush, London (1908)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Dora Meeson]