Building the bridge 1931

Vida Lahey contributed significantly to the development of art in Queensland both through her own work and as an art advocate and educator. Lahey studied at the Brisbane Technical College and at the National Gallery School, Melbourne (1905–06 and 1909); however, it was her time abroad following World War One that proved most influential. In 1916, she sailed for London, where she ministered to her brothers while they were on leave from active service. At the war’s end, Lahey remained in Europe to study, attending the classes of English painter Ethel Carrick while in Paris. Lahey would later credit the lessons she received from New Zealand-born artist Frances Hodgkins at St Ives in Cornwall as having sparked her lifelong interest in colour.

In Building the bridge 1931, Lahey has focused on the structure’s curved spans as symbols of modern engineering, and of modernity more broadly. Like Sydney artist Grace Cossington Smith, who painted the Sydney Harbour Bridge under construction in the early 1930s, Lahey has used a high-key, post-impressionist palette that reveals her understanding of developments in international art.