Dora Ohlfsen and the facade commission

Ohlfsen’s medal 'The awakening of Australian art’ 1907, garnered her international recognition. Exhibited in Paris, it was acquired by the French government for the Petit Palais. It was Ohlfen’s first work to enter a public collection. Subsequently shown in a presentation of Australian women’s art at the Franco-British exhibition in London, where it was singled out: ‘The conception is poetic; the execution masterly.’ Ohlfsen was presented with an award at the exhibition, alongside Thea Proctor and Frances Hodgkins.

Though the only true opportunities for her work were in Europe, Ohlfsen often spoke of her love for Australia. Here she captures what she described as its palpable ‘feeling of newness and vitality and power. Australians … desire to get everything out of life. We are untrammelled by traditions.’

Ohlfsen’s Anzac medal is Australia’s first artist-made commemorative medal honouring the Anzacs – and her most famous work. She first modelled the plasters in October 1916 (photographs of which are in the AGNSW Archive collection), with the inscribed date of 1915–16. She later adapted the final medal after the war to read ‘1914–18’. The medals (which she produced herself) were sold in London under the British War Charities Act in aid of permanently disabled Australian and New Zealand veterans.

Ohlfsen honours not only the soldiers but war’s forgotten victims – grieving women. While on the other side is an Anzac in silhouette, gun cocked, on this face is ‘Australia’, crowning her dead son with laurel. ‘I have made “Australia” and her son very young – representing as they do the youngest country and the youngest army’, said Ohlfsen. The model for this was 21-year-old Mrs Grey, an Australian who also worked as a nurse in Italy.

Italy joined WWI on the side of the allies in 1916. Ohlfsen and her partner Elena von Kügelgen joined the many other women nursing with the Red Cross, first assisting during the Avezzano earthquake of 1915, which killed over 30,000 people. She also worked as a volunteer in the Italian Auxiliary Hospital opposite her studio, where there was a shortage of nurses. This photograph was probably taken there.