by Meg Stewart
15 Norman Lindsay, My Mask, p. 236
16 Ibid., p. 240
17 University of Sydney, Rare Book and Special Collections Library, Kenneth Mackenzie Papers, box ½
18 Lindsay, My Mask, p. 240
19 Stewart, Norman Lindsay, p. 63
20 This party was written up in the press at the time, as was the painting itself. In the text of Autobiography of My Mother there is also a description of the so-called ‘loincloth party’ – an earlier party held at 8 Bridge Street. This was the party attended by Professor Radcliffe-Brown (not Christopher Brennan, as has been suggested), who by the time of The Party had left Australia to take up a position in America. Clearly some of the guests wore the same fancy-dress outfits to the two parties, or perhaps that’s what they always wore to parties! It may also be that Norman, having heard description of the ‘loincloth party’ (from my mother and others), exercised some artist licence in painting what the guests wore in his depiction of Alison’s farewell party. In the press account of the 1933 party there is also a mention of Alison’s close friend Ellen Gray giving ‘a brilliant exhibition of the German School of Dancing with an adept male partner’.
21 Lindsay, My Mask, p. 241
22 University of Sydney, Rare Book and Special Collections Library, Kenneth Mackenzie Papers, box ½
23 Ibid.
24 Norman Lindsay – Drawings and papers, 1894–1925, MLMSS 742, Microfilm 22–23 (CY 3149–3150). In Letters & Liars, this letter is wrongly attributed to the poet Hugh McCrae.
25 Ibid.
26 My mother’s letters to Norman (which had been returned to her) were placed in the Mitchell Library’s manuscript collection by me in 1994 – after she had died. Norman’s letters to her I also put there between 1992 and ’94. I do not know who gave my mother’s letters back to her, but after talking to Helen Glad, it would seem most likely that it was her mother Jane.
27 Norman Lindsay – Drawings and papers, 1894–1925, MLMSS 742, Microfilm 14 (CY 3573)
28 Ibid.
29 Margaret Coen – further papers, 1829–49, 1934–85, MLMSS 5147 add-on 2077/13
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid., add-on 2077/14
33 Ibid.
34 Stewart Family literary papers of Douglas Stewart, 1929–85, MLMSS 5147/19
35 Ibid.
36 Stewart, Norman Lindsay, p. 102
37 Ibid., pp. 121–23
38 Lindsay, Portrait of Pa, p. 117
39 Norman Lindsay – papers, 1910–68, MLMSS 6174/1
40 Margaret Coen – further papers, 1829–49, 1934–85, MLMSS 5147 add-on 2077/13
41 Bloomfield, Norman Lindsay Oil Paintings, p. 198
42 Douglas Stewart Papers, Margaret Coen – further papers, 1829–49, 1934–85, MLMSS 5147, add-on 2077/13
43 This in itself has caused enough minor confusion and probably explains why Joanna Mendelssohn gives my mother’s age as seventeen when she was writing to Norman in 1930.
Meg Stewart trained as a documentary film-maker. She went on to write and direct a short feature film that won first prize in the fiction category of the Greater Union Awards of the 1982 Sydney Film Festival. She has written a number of arts documentaries for ABC Radio as well as contributing to The National Times, The Sydney Morning Herald and Good Weekend magazine.
Her biography of Margaret Coen, Autobiography of My Mother, was first published in 1985. In 1991 she was the curator of a retrospective exhibition of her mother’s work at the National Trust S. H. Ervin Gallery. In 1993 she was the first Nancy Keesing Fellow at the State Library of New South Wales, as a result of which she edited The Woman I Am, a collection of Keesing’s last poetry.
Margaret Coen: A Passion for Painting, her book of her mother’s paintings, was published by the State Library of NSW Press in 1997, while her first novel, Modern Men Don’t Shift Fridges, came out in 1999, followed by The Dream Life of Harry Moon in 2001. In 2005 her biography of Margaret Olley, Far From a Still Life, was published, which has become a highly acclaimed bestseller.
Also by Meg Stewart
Non-fiction
Margaret Olley: Far From a Still Life
Margaret Coen: a Passion for Painting
Norman Lindsay: Artful Cats
Fiction
Modern Men Don’t Shift Fridges
The Dream Life of Harry Moon
Editor
The Woman I Am Poems by Nancy Keesing
Michael O’Dwyer, my maternal grandfather. His dreams of finding gold were washed away when the creek flooded.
Grandma Coen as a young woman (right), and her sisters, Lizzie and Linda.
Grandpa Coen and his family. (Back row, left to right): Timothy, John Joseph (who became Father Alphonsus), King. (Front row, left to right): Joe, Grandma (Margaret Trainor), Evangelista (in Grandma’s lap), Frank, Grandpa, Barney.
Dad, King Coen, who loved theatricals of any kind.
My mother, Bessie O’Dwyer, as a young milliner, aged seventeen. She could take a handful of flowers and ribbons, twist them around and arrange them in no time.
Me at a young age, looking quite pleased with life.
Widowed Grandma Coen presiding over afternoon tea in the courtyard of The House. (Left to right): Lizzie, Kathleen (on pony), Frank, Evangelista, Grandma (at table), Joe, Mollie, Linda (seated), Ina, Cocky, Trix (seated), Uncle Luke, Barney.
Isabel McDonagh in a still from a film, wearing Kathleen’s dress from Paris.
Godmother Trix. Kincoppal was terribly strict, but from the moment I stepped out of the cab on that rainy morning I loved being at school there.
Antonio Dattilo-Rubbo, who looked every inch an art master, taught us once a week at Kincoppal.
A family portrait from about the time I left school: Dad and Jack are in the back row; King, Margaret, Mum and Mollie are in the front row.
At the beach, taken when I stayed at the artist Alf Coffey’s studio house in Wyong.
Jack Flanagan. Jack was a great dancer and very recently divorced. Women were mad about him.
‘Perdita Adams’. Unfortunately my looks in real life didn’t live up to the photograph.
Norman Lindsay at Springwood. For years I had been hearing about and wanting to meet the artist because of his connection to my cousin Jack Flanagan, whose early career he had helped.
Ready for an Artists’ Ball in a hired costume. I had to pester and pester Mum before she’d allow me to go to my first of these events.
Percy Lindsay in a Roman toga with me as a flamenco dancer at an Artists’ Ball in 1940.
The Party by Norman Lindsay, a watercolour from 1933; Norman’s depiction of a farewell party Alison Rehfisch threw for George Duncan when he was leaving Australia. Norman is on the far left in a black jacket and bow tie. (© H., C. and A. Glad)
With Norman Lindsay at 12 Bridge Street, taken around 1937 when he was working on oil paintings such as Solly and Spring’s Innocence.
Painting in the bush, with Norman and Dora Jarret.
Preparing for my first one-person show in 1938.
Hydrangeas with Chinese Figure (watercolour), 1934.
The Offering (watercolour), a study of the model Olive, which was exhibited in 1936.
Douglas Stewart on Observatory Hill, 1939. This was painted on the day Douglas heard that his mother had died in New Zealand.
Douglas Stewart. He was dark and dramatic-looking with a smouldering quality.
With John Maund, president of the Australian Watercolour Institute from 1938–45.
Douglas Stewart (oil), 1941. This was painted while he was writing his verse-play Ned Kelly.
With Meg as a baby. I taught myself to draw from memory while I was baby-minding my new daughter.
Meg in the city.
Back home after the trip to Europe in 1954 with Meg and Douglas. I missed our new home at St Ives, and the space and light of Australia.
Early Spring (watercolour), 1968, painted at St Ives. Flowers look best in a vase straight from
the gardens where they have been picked.
Moon Over Ku-ring-gai (watercolour), 1970s, a painting much loved by Douglas.
Douglas at work in his writing room at St Ives, 1970s.
At work in my studio at St Ives, 1970s.
In the garden at St Ives with Douglas and our Tonkinese cat, Fang, 1970.
With Meg in the garden at St Ives, 1988.
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Version 1.0
Autobiography of My Mother
9781742747484
Published by Random House Australia, 2012
Copyright © Meg Stewart 2007
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
A Vintage Book
Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd
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First published in Australia by Penguin Books Australia, 1985
This Vintage edition first published in 2007
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry
Stewart, Meg, 1948–.
Autobiography of my mother.
Rev. ed.
ISBN 978 1 74166 823 0.
1. Coen, Margaret, 1909–1993. 2. Painters – Australia – Biography. 3. Watercolorists – Australia – Biography. I. Title.
759.994
Cover photograph of Margaret Coen, 1930, from the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Stewart family collection of photographs
Photograph of Meg Stewart by Jessica Hromas
Cover design by Christabella Designs
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