Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, April 18, 2022: Jean Appleton, an Australian painter, art teacher, printmaker (#1548)

Jean Appleton (1911 – 2003) was an Australian painter, art teacher and printmaker. She worked with oils, watercolour, charcoal, pastel, pencil and India ink. The second of three children and an only daughter, Appleton did a five-year diploma course in drawing and illustration at the East Sydney Technical College (now the National Art School).

She later moved to England and enrolled at the Westminster School of Art where she produced Australia's two earliest cubist paintings. After the Second World War broke out, Appleton returned to Australia in 1940 to teach art at three public schools to allow for the continuation of her work and assisted in the war effort by studying vocational therapy. Her work received a large amount of recognition from the art industry and she earned four prizes.

Appleton was born in the Sydney suburb of Ashfield. She had a lifelong interest in the performing due to her great-aunt Agnes Blackwood. She was educated at the small Haberfield Private School, and was disciplined for drawing in her study books; she wanted to become an artist during her childhood. After she earned an intermediate certificate with an A in arts in 1928, Appleton enrolled at the East Sydney Technical College (now the National Art School) to commence a five-year diploma course in art. Appleton's parents supported her career choice; she believed her father had not taken her ambitions in art seriously for fear she would be married and find art as a hobby.

She remembered her first teachers and the atmosphere as uninspiring, and ventured to the Archibald Prize exhibition to attempt to arouse her interest with no success. The arrival of the English painter Douglas Dundas in 1930 greatly influenced her. Appleton graduated with a diploma in drawing and illustration in 1933 and earned a college scholarship. After she observed impressionist prints lying in an Anthony Hordern & Sons department store, she became preoccupied about venturing to Europe and studying modern art to which her father objected. Appleton shared and worked in a studio in Quay with fellow painter Dorothy Thornhill, and earned capital by creating textile patterns. She made multiple unsuccessful attempts to obtain the New South Wales Government Travelling Scholarship. After her father died in 1935 her mother was persuaded by Appleton's aunt to allow her daughter to travel to England by cargo ship with a minor income allowance.

Appleton found affordable accommodation and enrolled at the Westminster School of Art's morning and evening classes over the next three years from 1936. She was educated by the painters Bernard Meninsky and Mark Gertler. Appleton completed Australia's two earliest cubist paintings in London, Still Life 1937 and Painting IX 1937. She was part of a team of Australian artists that produced a 45 m (148 ft) mural and a gilded ram to erect it for the International Wool Secretariat at Glasgow's British Empire Exhibition in 1938. The impending Second World War caused Appleton's mother to become anxious and wanted her daughter to return to Australia. She went to the Centenary Cezanne Exhibition, galleries in Luxembourg, and art in Italy before doing so.

In that era, teaching was a venture that allowed artists to continue working; Appleton taught at the Canberra Girls Grammar School in 1940 and had her maiden solo exhibition at the Macquarie Galleries in Sydney that same year. She became interested in the war effort and did a course in vocational therapy because its director wanted volunteers to assist her. Appleton was granted a full-time position until 1945.

Appleton's work received much recognition from the art industry; she won the Rockdale Art Prize in 1958, the D'Arcy Morris Memorial Prize two years later, the Bathurst Art Prize in 1961 and the Portia Geach Memorial Award in 1965.

Appleton exhibited with the Jim Alexander Gallery, Melbourne in 1985. She underwent a cataract operation in 1991 and created a large mural-size painting after her sight was corrected. A retrospective of her work was held at the Campbelltown City Bicentennial Art Gallery five years later.

Appleton preferred to work with oils and watercolour; she also exhibited works in charcoal, pastel, pencil and India ink. Describing painting as "a very personal thing" with "a poetry in painting" and "a love affair", one of her favourite subjects concerned bottles. In 1942, Appleton went away from rounded geometric forms that she learnt during her time in London to an increasingly decorative and schematic cubist style and experienced with a lighter colour scheme.

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