Stella Rodway

A significant portrait painter in the early decades of the twentieth century, Florence Rodway trained in Hobart from 1897 and in 1902 won a four-year scholarship to the Royal Academy schools, London. Returning to Australia in 1906 she settled in Sydney, joining Julian Ashton's evening classes. She became a well-known miniatures and portrait painter, with sitters including notable figures such as Dame Nellie Melba and Henry Lawson.

There was a revival in popularity of the portrait miniature in the early twentieth century, with the majority of the Gallery’s Australian collection of miniatures painted in the first two decades of the twentieth century. A number of American women artists, also trained in Paris and London, including Eda Nemoede Casterton and Lucy May Stanton, were part of the revival in that country. In Australia Rodway was among the most successful group of miniaturists which included Bernice Edwell and Justine Kong Sing who had all trained and successfully exhibited overseas.

Rodway married in Sydney in 1920 and although her work was less prolific, she continued to exhibit overseas, taking part in the Society of Artists’ Exhibition of Australian Art in London (1923), the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley (1924) and Australian Artists’ Work at the Imperial Institute in London (1928). Rodway returned to Hobart with her husband and daughter around 1932 and established a home studio. She exhibited with the Art Society of Tasmania and the Tasmanian Group of Painters.

This charming miniature depicts Stella Rodway (nee Midwood) the artist’s sister-in-law and wife to her brother Charles. Finely painted, the portrait is indicative of Rodway’s skills in working across a range of formats, and in adapting the traditional medium of the miniature to evocatively portray a modern subject.