Alfred Gilbert’s Perseus arming c.1882 was selected in London by Herbert Dicksee, a noted animal painter and friend of the Rivers family, who acted as overseas purchaser for the Godfrey Rivers Trust. Daphne Mayo later represented the Trust when the work was officially handed over to the Gallery in December 1936.

Interior 1958 was the Gallery’s first acquisition of a work by Grace Cossington Smith, while Thea Proctor’s Still life and interior 1959 was purchased by Mayo from Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, in November 1966, soon after Proctor’s death. It was the last of Mayo’s purchases for the Godfrey Rivers Trust. 

In her purchases for the Godfrey Rivers Trust, Mayo supported fellow women sculptors. She acquired works by her friends Margel Hinder and Polar bear by Ola Cohn — Cohn’s Polar bear being the artist’s first work to be purchased by an Australian state gallery.

Adrian Feint was well known to Mayo, being a fellow member of Sydney’s Society of Artists. In June 1940, Margaret Preston invited Daphne Mayo to her home, stating that she wanted to show her ‘an important work’, which may have been this one. Mayo greatly admired Preston’s work, purchasing an example for her own personal collection as well as for the Godfrey Rivers Trust. 

Mayo first saw William Dobell’s masterpiece, The Cypriot, in 1942, when she visited his King’s Cross studio. Deciding the work ‘would look well in our Gallery’, she later managed to secure it for 100 guineas; this was just prior to the 1943 Archibald Prize controversy, which propelled Dobell to fame and caused the prices of his work to rise accordingly.

Eric Wilson’s Stove theme represents the Queensland Art Gallery’s first acquisition of an abstract painting, and was purchased from the artist Jean Appleton, soon after the death of her husband, Eric Wilson. A friend of Appleton’s, Mayo also negotiated the purchase of other paintings by Wilson for the Gallery.

Godfrey Miller’s Trees in moonlight was the Gallery’s second acquisition of an abstract painting, and it was purchased from the artist after it had been on loan to the Gallery for some time. Painted at the Domain, it depicts the central Sydney park before trees were cut down to make way for the existing parking station.

Mrs Selina Rivers, the benefactor of the Godfrey Rivers Trust, gifted An alien in Australia to the Gallery, together with other paintings by her late husband. She also gifted a portrait bust of the artist by Daphne Mayo.

These two works by major British artists are among the Queensland Art Fund’s many gifts to the Gallery. Co-founded by Daphne Mayo in 1929, the Fund was established to acquire international works of art for public collections in Queensland. Its gifts were sourced in England with the help of its purchasing agent, the National Art Collections Fund. Before the local Fund eventually disbanded in 1950, it gave the Gallery a total of 27 works — in Mayo’s words, examples of the ‘sound craftsmanship’ then fashionable in London.