Thea Proctor
Alethea Mary Proctor was an Australian painter, print maker, designer and teacher who advocated for the ideas of ‘taste’ and ‘style’. Focusing on line, colour and form, she initially concentrated on drawing and painting in watercolours. Her decorative fans and drawings, typically watercolours on silk, were well received when they were exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts and the New English Art Club.
Having moved to London in 1903, Proctor returned to Australia in 1912, to exhibit in Sydney and Melbourne. The National galleries of Victoria and New South Wales bought works, but she was disappointed with the overall response and returned to England late in 1914. She soon produced her first lithographs which, although she continued to paint, established her reputation when exhibited by the Senefelder Club. She later exhibited with the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers and at the Goupil Gallery.
Returning to Melbourne in 1921, she tried to promote lithography, but found little interest and returned to Sydney and joined the Society of Artists. In 1926 she co-founded the Contemporary Group to encourage young avant-garde artists. Although Proctor’s work was relatively conservative, it was considered ‘dangerously modern’ by Australian standards and brought her recognition but little financial reward. In 1932 Art in Australia devoted an issue to her work. She taught design privately and at the Sydney Art School, introducing many young artists to linocut printing, as well as teaching drawing for the Society of Arts and Crafts in the 1940s.
Regarded as an arbiter of taste and always elegantly dressed, Proctor wrote on fashion, flower arranging, colours for cars and interior decoration. She organized artists’ parties in the 1920s, designed the fashionably modern Lacquer Room restaurant in 1932 for Farmer & Co. Ltd and produced theatre décor in the 1940s. In her later years she continued to encourage young and innovative artists, took on portrait commissions and exhibited regularly with the Macquarie Galleries.