Rain clouds at dawn (Sydney Harbour)

From 1907-18, the Ballarat-born Hilda Rix Nicholas lived and travelled extensively throughout Western Europe as well as making several trips to Morocco. While she emerged from her training in Paris as an exceptional draughtsperson and commanding figure painter, her work in Étaples in Brittany, where she spent her summers, as well as that from trips to Morocco in 1912 and 1914, encouraged her to develop a landscape art that focused on the power of light and colour and sensations of place.

Rix Nicholas returned to Australia in 1918 and by 1919 had settled in Mosman in Sydney following shattering personal experiences of loss during the First World War. Rix Nicholas had travelled to Europe with her sister and mother, both of whom died from illnesses in 1914 and 1915. In 1916, Rix Nicholas married the Australian soldier George Matson Nicholas who was killed a month later on the Western Front.

Sydney became a place of renewal for Rix Nicholas. She worked from a studio in the gardens of her Mosman home that overlooked Sydney Harbour. She was a short walk from the site of the Curlew Camp, where an earlier generation of artists had painted on Sydney’s shores. 'Rain clouds a dawn (Sydney Harbour)' is a talisman of the restorative forces of the ambience of this location. This portrait of the clarified light and colour of the harbour is in stark contrast to the traumatic and dark scenes of war that Rix Nicholas had been painting before moving to Sydney and marks a turning point in her practice. While Rix Nicholas distanced herself from the movements of modernism that were developing in Sydney during this time, 'Rain clouds at dawn (Sydney Harbour)' connects to works by progressive painters including Margaret Preston, Roy De Maistre and Roland Wakelin who were similarly painting in proximity to the city’s light-filled waters.