Violet M McInnes Miss SM Chinnery

Violet McInnnes painted Sheila Margaret Chinnery, later Waters (1922-2020) for both the 1943 and the 1944 Archibald Prize. The work reproduced here is believed to be the 1943 portrait.

Sheila Chinnery was a supervisor of the secretarial pool in the Department of Shipping during the Second World War and the daughter of Ernest William Pearson Chinnery (1887-1972), who held the position of Government Anthropologist and was the first director of the Department of Native Affairs under the Commonwealth. It appears that McInnes was a friend of Sheila’s mother, the photographer Sarah Neil Chinnery (1887-1970).