Collection: Clarice Beckett

Clarice Marjoribanks Beckett (1887–1935) was an Australian painter associated with tonalism. Born in Casterton, Victoria, she trained at the National Gallery School in Melbourne under Frederick McCubbin before studying under Max Meldrum, whose theories on tonal values influenced her technique. Beckett exhibited with Meldrum’s circle and the Twenty Melbourne Painters Society, holding annual solo exhibitions from 1923 while living in Beaumaris, where she painted en plein air at dawn and dusk.

Beckett’s paintings depict Melbourne’s suburbs in misty, atmospheric tones, using a muted palette and simplified forms. Though aligned with Meldrum’s tonalism, her work incorporated spiritual and psychological elements drawn from Buddhism, Theosophy, and Freudian ideas. By the 1930s, her compositions became more abstract, with broader color use. Her subjects, beachscapes, streets, and gardens, were often painted under domestic constraints but emphasized luminous, diffused light.

After her death, over a thousand of Beckett’s works were destroyed, including many from her later, more abstract period. Rediscovered in the 1970s, her surviving paintings are now in collections such as the National Gallery of Australia and the Art Gallery of South Australia. Her role in tonalism and early Australian modernism has since been re-evaluated.