Preston, Margaret (1875 - 1963)

Margaret Preston was the first woman to be commissioned by the Art Gallery of NSW to produce a self-portrait. In 1996 one of her hand-coloured woodcuts of a West Australian banksia from 1929 was commemorated on an Australia Day postage stamp.

Margaret Rose Mcpherson studied in Melbourne and Adelaide before travelling overseas. In 1919 she married Bill Preston. As a successful teacher and exhibitor, she developed a reputation for her highly decorative and colourful paintings and woodcuts of Australian fauna and flora at a time when European flowers were still considered the norm for gardens and paintings.

Books

• De Vries, Susanna, The Complete Book of Great Australian Women: Thirty-six women who changed the course of Australia, HarperCollins, Sydney, 2003. [ Details... ]

Journal Articles

• Butler, Roger, 'Margaret Preston's Banksia Woodcut Memorialised', Australian Garden History, vol. 8, no. 3, 1996, p. 28. [ Details... ]

See also

• Australian Dictionary of Biography Online, 2006, http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au. [ Details... ]
• Macklin, Robert, 100 great Australians, Currey O'Neil Ross, South Yarra, Vic., 1983, 248 pp. [ Details... ]
• Radi, Heather (ed.), 200 Australian Women: A Redress Anthology, Women's Redress Press, Sydney, 1988, 258 pp. (Also available at http://www.200australianwomen.com/) [ Details... ]