Allamandas I c.1955-58

Margaret Olley’s celebrated career began in Brisbane in 1937, when she was a border at Somerville House and her talents were recognised by the school’s art mistress, Caroline Barker. Olley studied briefly at Brisbane’s Central Technical College before enrolling at East Sydney Technical College, where Margaret Cilento was a fellow student. Olley graduated in 1945 and held her first solo exhibitions in 1948 – at the Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, and Moreton Galleries, Brisbane.

In 1949, Olley’s friend Anne Wienholt funded her travels to Paris, where she flatted with Wienholt and Cilento and attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, an art school in the city’s Montparnasse district. The still lifes for which she became known were influenced by the domestic scenes of French painters Jean-Édouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard.

In 1953, Olley returned to Brisbane and was welcomed into the artistic fold, which was centred on gallerists Brian and Marjorie Johnstone. Dating from this period, Allamandas I c.1955–58 reveals Olley’s new-found appreciation for colour. The painting was included in her 1960 exhibition at the Johnstone Gallery. Reviewer Gertrude Langer remarked that Olley’s ‘beautifully handled blues, and objects divested of their weight establish the [painting’s] soft, dreamy mood’.