South coast

Adelaide Perry was born at Beechworth, Victoria and had some early private art tuition in Dunedin, New Zealand before studying at the National Gallery School, Melbourne in 1914, where she won the 1919 Travelling Scholarship. She did not travel abroad until 1922, when she studied at the Royal Academy Schools, London from 1922-25 under Charles Sims, Gerald Kelly, Walter Sickert and Ernest Jackson. She also visited and exhibited in France at this time, but it was English painting that had the most influence on her. Upon her return to Australia she settled in Sydney. She opened her own studio and school, The Chelsea Art School in 1926 which lasted at least twenty years. She taught drawing at Julian Ashton's Sydney Art School 1930-33 and also taught at the Presbyterian Ladies' College in suburban Croydon.

She produced her first known linocuts 'Hairbrush and mirror' and 'Potts Point' in 1925. These encouraged simplification of form and colour in keeping with her modernist compositions (she was a foundation member of the Contemporary Group in 1926). She taught linocut printmaking to a number of other artists, including Vera Blackburn and Lisette Kohlhagen, and was largely responsible (with Thea Proctor and Margaret Preston) for the popularity of linocuts at the time.

Hendrik Kolenberg and Anne Ryan, 'Australian prints from the Gallery's collection', AGNSW, 1998