Warrandyte’s Art Circles
Warrandyte nurtured two highly influential artistic communities during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They can be said to rival similar communities established at Heide in Bulleen and Montsalvat in Eltham in their influence on Australian art history.
The first grew up around painter Clara Southern who was already well-known before moving to Warrandyte in the early 1900s. From 1888, after studying with Walter Withers at Heidelberg and Melbourne’s National Gallery Artist School, she shared a Collins Street studio with artist Jane Sutherland conducting drawing and painting classes.
In 1905 at the age of 44 she married Warrandyte miner, John Arthur Flinn and took up residence in their Warrandyte cottage ‘Blythe Bank’ on the hill above the river which features in the painting ‘The Artist’s Home’ 1909. Clara loved Warrandyte and it was her love of place and her Warrandyte works that strengthened her artistic reputation, with her landscapes in particular receiving acclaim for their ‘Australian’ quality. These landscapes of the early years of the 20th century years reflect her love of the Warrandyte bush, the serene river scenery, the picturesque village, tranquil dawns and dusky twilights.
However Clara’s influence was far wider reaching. By encouraging other artists such as ‘Jo’ Sweatman, Penleigh Boyd, Louis McCubbin, Harold Herbert and Frank Crozier to visit, paint and then buy land in the township she instigated a long-standing artists’ community and encouraged an affinity with the local landscape. She was also a great supporter of women artists participating in art associations and societies in their promotion.
Clara’s devotion to Warrandyte as a painting place, her love of community and her promotion of the area to other artists helped influence landscape painting around Melbourne in the early 20th century and together with her promotion of women in the arts has left a lasting legacy.

Photo of Clara Southern taken in her studio 1914 by Mina Moore

Evensong c1900 NGV
In the 1930s another notable art circle formed around art patron Connie Smith who, with husband Alex, had bought part of Penleigh Boyd’s property. They lived in his studio & rented out the house & cottages.
Connie turned the old studio into a permanent centre for the exhibition of works by contemporary Australian artists. After the studio and cottages burnt down in the 1939 bushfires, Alex and Connie moved into the old weatherboard house then built their house ‘Décor’. Connie established an extensive garden, no doubt influenced by her great friend Edna Walling who was a constant visitor.
Connie was intimately involved in the local art scene and was especially close to Clara Southern & Jo Sweatman. Visitors to the house included Danila Vassilieff, Adrian Lawlor, Albert Tucker, Arnold Shore, Frank Crozier, Nutter Buzacott and James Wigley. Connie and Alex provided artists with support and encouragement creating an artistic movement similar to that of John and Sunday Reed at Heide or Justus Jorgensen at Montsalvat. Vassilieff painted a controversial four-part screen for Connie Smith ‘Expulsion from Paradise’ which is said to have had great influence on Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd and John Perceval.
Warrandyte’s pottery tradition was also fostered by Connie. She is credited with initiating the exhibiting of pottery by holding a show in her studio home before she sold her house in the late 1940s to potter Reg Preston.

Yosi Berger & Connie Smith. (SLV)

Connie Smith (WHS)
©2023 Text by Valerie Polley. Photos: Warrandyte Historical Society