Eveline Winifred Syme was born at Thames Ditton, England to Australian parents in 1888, but she was raised in the family mansion at St Kilda, Melbourne, Australia. She studied Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge and then completed a diploma of Education in Melbourne in 1914. After studying art in Paris, she returned to Australia. In 1929 she moved to London to study with pioneer linocut artist George Flight at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art.
Painter and printmaker Eveline Syme was born on 26 October 1888 at Thames Ditton, Surrey, England to Australian parents. She grew up in Australia at the family mansion at St Kilda, Melbourne. After leaving the Church of England Girls' Grammar School, she returned to England and studied Classics in 1907–910 at Newnham College, University of Cambridge. At the time, the University did not award degrees to women, therefore she applied to the University of Melbourne for accreditation, but was only granted admission to third-year Classics. She chose instead to complete a diploma in Education, which she received in 1914. Syme studied art in Paris between 1921 and 1924, where she attended La Grande Chaumière, the Académie Ranson with Maurice Denis, and the art school of André Lhote. During this time, her close friend, the Australian printmaker Ethel Spowers, was also a student, and it was possibly she who first introduced Syme to linocut, a variant of woodcutting in which a sheet of the cheap floor covering was carved into, then inked for printing.
In 1924 Syme returned to Melbourne and in 1925 exhibited her first woodcut, dating from 1927, increasingly shifting her attention to linocuts. Syme contributed woodcuts, watercolours and several colour linocuts to the Athenaeum, Melbourne, in 1928. In the same year she discovered the work of British modernist printmaker, Claude Flight, from his recent publication Lino-cuts, later recalling: 'Here was something new and different, lino-cut no longer regarded as a base form of woodcut, but evolved into a distinct branch of 20th Century Art. I had seen nothing more vital and essentially 'modern' in the best sense of the word that the reproductions shown in this book' (Joseph Brown Collection).
Eager to learn more about the innovation of Flight's work, Syme moved to London in 1929 with Spowers to study with Flight at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art. In the mid-1920s linocutting was considered just an introductory form of printing and was not considered a serious technique. However, its simplicity, according to Flight, made it an egalitarian artform and he vigorously promoted it to his students. It was during this time that the school nurtured several talented female artists – among them fellow Australian Dorrit Black, English-Canadian Sybil Andrews, and Swiss-born Lill Tschudi – all adopting and practicing Flight’s approach of multi-layered linocuts, which enabled them to capture the energy of the modern world. Syme embraced this new form of art with enthusiasm and Flight prompted her to experiment with abstraction and to see form from a new perspective. This approach, involving bold colours and rhythmic design, can be observed in Skating (1929, National Gallery of Australia), made soon after Syme had enrolled in Flight's linocut class. In this work the geometrical construction of the composition was conceived as a system of rhythmic lines, intersecting arcs and dynamic symmetry. Syme limited her palette to two colours to focus attention on the looping rhythms of the skaters' movement. The Elvet Bridge, Durham (private collection) revealed her appreciation of European architecture. In 1930 she took part in the Second Exhibition of British Linocut at the Redfern Gallery, London. Her work of the early 1930s focused on decorative views drawn on her travels through England, Provence, and Tuscany – especially Siena, which she visited before moving back to Australia in April 1930.
Syme returned to Melbourne firmly determined to spread Flight's modernist views. She was an active member of the Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria, the Lyceum Club and the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors. At the 1930 annual exhibition of the Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria she gave practical demonstrations of Flight's linocut techniques. She also published an account of Flight and his teaching in the Recorder and spoke on the radio about linocut and wood-engraving. By 1933 her attention had shifted to urban scenes, and it was at this time that she created her best-known prints. Eveline Syme died in Melbourne, Australia, on 6 June 1961. The art historical rediscovery of her work began in the mid-1970s and coincided with a major reassessment of women artists in Australian modernism. More recently, her work was included in the landmark exhibition Cutting Edge: Modernist British Printmaking at the Dulwich Picture Gallery (2019), featuring iconic works by Claude Flight and eight of his leading students who played a major role in the Grosvenor School story. It was the first time that Syme, Black and Spowers were included in a major museum exhibition outside of Australia. Syme’s work is not currently represented in UK public collections
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Eveline Syme]
Publications related to [Eveline Syme] in the Ben Uri Library