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Constance Stokes is a name you may never have heard, but it was once mentioned alongside other great Australian painters of her time — Sidney Nolan, Russell Drysdale and Arthur Boyd.
Maybe it is a lesson on the fickle nature of fame, or a reflection on the demands of raising a family, for some reason Stokes' 60-year career has been largely forgotten.
That could be changing, as the biggest exhibition of her work begins at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery on Friday.
"She was an amazing painter," said Danny Lacy, the gallery's senior curator.
"Just fascinating, technically.
"Very skilled in drawing and painting and when you see the exhibition, you can see major changes in her style [throughout her career].
"She started off with a very traditional, very conservative style, but then later in life she just expanded into these amazing raw colours, like raw orange and teal, and those paintings are really stunning."
Stokes was born and raised in the tiny hamlet of Miram in 1906, in the wheatbelt of far western Victoria.
Her family moved to Melbourne when she was 14 and she later studied art at the National Gallery School of Victoria.
Stokes had success as a painter, her work appeared in high-profile exhibitions, and she won the prestigious National Gallery Travelling Scholarship, which paid for her to spend two years in Europe.
This allowed her to attend the Royal Academy in London and travel. She returned to Australia in 1933 and put on a successful one-woman show.
She married a businessman, Eric Stokes, and continued painting, but her career all but stopped in 1936 when she had the first of three children.
Her daughter, Lucilla d'Abrera, said Stokes was bitterly disappointed at having to choose motherhood over her career as an artist, but in 1962, the death of her husband left her with a mortgage to pay and a new impetus to bring her career back to life.
"She had had waiting lists of collectors waiting to get her works," Ms d'Abrera said.
"She was included in every single exhibition that was put on.
"When I came across her archive of letters, I came across masses of letters begging for her to please exhibit in this gallery and that gallery and would she please submit a painting or a drawing.
"She never had to seek out galleries, they sought her."
Ms d'Abrera said her mother, who died in 1991, never regarded herself as a "female artist".
"She was just 'an artist' and she didn't really want to join the women's artists' groups, because she wanted to stand on her own for her talent, and not for her gender."
But as time went by, recognition of Stokes slipped away inexplicably, while other names from her generation remained.
Ms d'Abrera believes this is partly because she was a woman, while most of her contemporaries were men, but also because of circumstances and the impact of her forced break from painting to raise children.
Mr Lacy agrees it is difficult to explain why Stokes does not enjoy the recognition she deserves today, but the tide appears to be turning.
"She's really a rediscovered artist in a way," he said.
"[When you see her work] you can really see the place that she deserves in Australian art history."
Topics: art-history, arts-and-entertainment, contemporary-art, visual-art, mornington-3931, melbourne-3000, vic
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