Margaret Olley: Australian Intimiste

Margaret Olley: Australian Intimiste celebrates the legacy and significant achievements of Margaret Olley AC – National Art School alum and one of Australia’s most beloved painters – through the lens of the European artistic tradition intimisme, which honours the quiet poetry of domestic life and the interior world.

Drawing from significant public and private collections, Margaret Olley: Australian Intimiste traces Olley’s preoccupations from early interiors to her later richly textured compositions featuring floral arrangements, antiques, and domestic objects. Each painting is more than a still life – it is a portrait, a sensory memory, and a trace of the artist’s personal world, animated by beauty.

Curated by NAS Gallery Manager and Senior Curator Katrina Cashman curator in consultation with author and curator Christine France OAM, the exhibition explores Olley’s oeuvre as it relates to place and relationships. Rather than maintaining a separate painting studio, she worked primarily in her own home and those of family and friends. While she occasionally painted landscapes, portraits, and sketched outdoors – particularly while travelling – her principal subjects were interior spaces, window views, and intimate tabletop arrangements, capturing the resonance of light, memory, and everyday experience.

Though working within intimiste traditions of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, Olley led an unconventional life, rejecting traditional domestic roles. Her work was never static, echoing the rhythms of a personal world in flux – shaped by the seasons, light, and her enduring dialogue with art history. Australian Intimiste celebrates Olley’s remarkable six-decade career since graduating from the National Art School and honours the formative relationships and creative communities that sustained her practice.

The exhibition includes more than sixty artworks by Margaret Olley AC and a selection of works by her National Art School friends, teachers and peers including Jean Bellette, Margaret Cilento, Douglas Dundas, Russell Drysdale, Frank Medworth, David Strachan and Tony Tuckson among others. It also includes Sir William Dobell’s famous 1948 Archibald Prize winning portrait of Margaret Olley that caused such a sensation in the day.

A substantial publication accompanies the exhibition, including essays by Katrina Cashman, Dr Georgina Cole, Christine France OAM, Dr Emily Gray and Dr Michael Hill. Publication supported by The Gordon Darling Foundation. Project supported by NAS Gallery Ambassadors. 

Closed for Labour Day 5 October.