Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1879 Sydney, Australia

Died: 1977 Bowral, Australia

Year of Migration to the UK: 1899

Other name/s: Irene Mort

Biography

Designer, illustrator and printmaker Eirene Mort was born in the Sydney suburb of Woollahra, Australia in 1879. She was educated at St Catherine's Clergy Daughters' School, Waverley, where she excelled in painting and design, and in 1899, at the age of 19, she set sail for London to continue her studies. Initially, she boarded at Queen Alexandra's House in South Kensington, a select residence for young women, where she established a close relationship with fellow Australian artist Nora Weston, which lasted for the rest of their lives; they lived and worked together as a couple until Weston's death in 1965. Mort studied to be an art teacher at the prestigious Royal College of Art, which aimed 'not to train artists who would hang pictures on walls, but to train designers', qualifying in 1903. She also attended four further art schools in London: the Grosvenor Life School, where she studied fine art for three years, working in a wide variety of media including pencil, pen and ink, charcoal and watercolour; the Royal Drawing Society, where after only one term in 1903, she was offered a position as a teacher-artist; London University, where she studied medieval art under Kaines Smith, a recognised authority on English and European art of the period; and finally, the newly established Royal College of Art Needlework, where she studied needlework, interior design, embroidery, appliqué, stencilling and pyrography. During this period, she also worked for the London firm of Liberty & Co.

Mort was greatly influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement, particularly Augustus Pugin, Walter Crane, Henry Cole, and William Morris, and was indebted to John Ruskin for her conviction that good design must be based on nature. Her oeuvre followed the multifaceted pattern of Arts and Crafts production, with her work eventually ranging over forty different kinds of artistic production and media. In England, she also acquired a vision of society in which the individual worker could take pride in his or her work, rather than simply mass-producing items. Her extraordinary range of skills placed her well beyond the conventional limits of professions for women in the period, and she was well equipped to earn her living as an applied arts practitioner when she returned to Sydney in 1906. There, she set up a studio with Weston, which became one of Sydney's earliest centres for professional design and applied art, flourishing for more than thirty years. In 1912–13 Mort returned to London, spending several months at the London County Council Central School of Arts and Crafts in Southampton Row, attending courses under Graily Hewitt, a noted English calligrapher and illuminator. She also studied etching under Luke Taylor and became adept at producing etchings of buildings of historical interest, such as College Gate in York. After returning to Australia, she continued to work at her studio with Weston. During the First World War, Mort and some of the artisans she had previously taught volunteered at the Randwick Military Hospital, helping returning soldiers from the Australian Commonwealth Military Forces to produce useful items, but also assisting in their mental recovery. In 1921 Mort founded the Australian Painter-Etchers' Society, she was an honorary treasurer of the Australian Ex Libris Society, a member of the Australian Bookplate Club and also founded the Australian Guild of Handicrafts. A respected teacher of art, she served as a principal of the Women Painters' Art School and taught in a number of other schools. In 1947, together with Weston, she again taught handicrafts in repatriation hospitals. Mort died in Bowral, Australia in 1977.

Related books

Dale Middleby and Pam Lane (ed.), Eirene Mort: A Livelihood (Canberra: CMAG, 2017)
Pam Lane, Eirene Mort: Artist, Artisan and New Woman (MPhil Dissertation, The Australian National University, 2017)
Geoff Hannon and Kirsten McKay (eds.), Portrait of an Exhibition: Centenary Celebration of the First Australian Exhibition of Women's Work 1907 (Castlemaine: Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum, 2007)
J. Elizabeth Little, Bedrooms and Bookplates: The Designs of Eirene Mort (PhD Thesis, University of New South Wales, 2005)
John McPhee, 'Eirene Mort and a National School of Design', Australian Antique Collector, July-December 1989, pp. 48-51
Margaret Henry, 'Eirene Mort', in Heather Radi, (ed.), 200 Australian Women (Broadway: Women's Redress Press, 1988)
Margaret Mort, 'Eirene Mort, a Biographical Memoir', in Eirene Mort, Old Canberra: A Sketchbook of the 1920s (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 1987)
Eirene Mort, Eirene Mort's Australian Alphabet: from the Collection of the Australian National Gallery (Canberra: The Gallery, 1986)
Eirene Mort, Checklist of the Bookplates of Eirene Mort (Melbourne, Hawthorn Press, 1943)
Eirene Mort, The Old Roads (Sydney: E. Mort, 1931)
Florence Sulman, A Popular Guide to the Wild Flowers of New South Wales (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1926) (illustrations by E. Mort)
Mary Gilmore, The Tale of Tiddley Winks (Sydney: The Bookfellow, 1916) (illustrations by E. Mort)

Public collections

Related organisations

Royal College of Art (student)
Grosvenor Life School, London (student)
Royal Drawing Society, London (student)
London University, London (student)
Royal School of Art Needlework, London (student)
Royal Drawing Society, London (teacher)
Central School of Arts and Crafts, London (student)
Australian Painter-Etchers' Society (founder)
Australian Ex Libris Society (honorary treasurer)
Australian Bookplate Club (member)
Australian Guild of Handicrafts (founder)
Women Painters' Art School, Australia (principal)

Selected exhibitions

Eirene Mort: A Livelihood, Canberra Museum and Gallery, Canberra (2018)
Dora Wilson (1883–1946), Elma Roach (1897–1942) and Eirene Mort (1879–1977), Jim Alexander Gallery, East Malvern, Melbourne (1982)
Australian Painter-Etchers' Society, Melbourne (1938)
Sydney Building, Canberra (1938)
Kambala Exhibition, Rose Bay, Sydney (1934)
Australian Painter-Etchers' Society, Melbourne (1927, 1928)
Australian Relief Prints, Tyrrell's Art Gallery, Sydney (1923)
Australian Painter-Etchers' Society, Melbourne (1921)
Shaw's Gallery, Sydney (1920 and 1921)
Australian Applied Art, Bray's Studios, Angel Place, Sydney (1909)
Women's Work Exhibition, Melbourne Exhibition Building, Melbourne (1907)
Australian Applied Art, Sydney (1906)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Eirene Mort]