This work, with its sweeping directional movement of the road through the centre of the picture plane, depicts Eastern Road near the artist’s home in Turramurra at a time when it was still a semi-rural suburb. The watercolour was preceded by a detailed sketchbook drawing with precise colour notations. Cossington Smith told Daniel Thomas that when she was doing her initial drawing she was ‘pleased that a figure came onto the road to animate its emptiness’.

National Gallery of Australia | Audio Tour | Grace Cossington Smith

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Eastern Road, Turramurra [The Eastern Road, Turramurra] c.1926

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Orchestral concert: Dr Sargent conducting in the Sydney Town Hall c.1939, oil,pencil, pen and ink on cardboard on composition board, 45.9 (h) x 41.0 (w) cm. Collection of the National Gallery of Australia

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Orchestral concert: Dr Sargent conducting in the Sydney Town Hall c.1939

Cossington Smith said of her painting Interior in yellow: ‘The subject took me very much. It is a room with a wardrobe and a bed and carpet but the chief thing to me was the yellow walls…the whole thing is meant to express an interior with light…the sunlight did not come in in a definite way but the whole room seemed to be full of light, which is what I want to do more than the actual sunlight. I feel that even the shadows are a subdued light and they must have light in them as well as the light parts.’ (Interview with Hazel de Berg, 1965, National Library of Australia)

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Interior in yellow 1962, 1964

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Interior with verandah doors 1954, oil on composition board, 76.2 (h) x 91.0 (w) cm, signed and dated l.l., black oil paint "G. Cossington Smith 54".Collection of the National Gallery of Australia. Bequest of Lucy Swanton 1982

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Interior with verandah doors 1954

Some of Cossington Smith’s most successful portraits are her tender drawings of family members. Her close bond with her family is evident in her drawings of her father Ernest and her sisters Diddy and Madge, depicted in uncontrived, relaxed poses. In Portrait of Diddy her sister appears meditative, wearing the artist’s favourite colour, yellow. As she said: ‘Yellow is the colour of the sun’. This work was in an extremely fragile condition and is being shown for the first time since entering the Gallery’s collection, thanks to the dedicated efforts of the Gallery’s conservators.

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Portrait of Diddy c.1922

In Interior with wardrobe mirror the artist recreates her bedroom from multiple perspectives. Two wardrobe doors are open; one revealing a close-up of drawers within the cupboard, the other with a mirror reflecting the garden and sky outside. It is a miraculous, poetic integration of intimate interior space and the exterior sun-filled environment – the parts and the whole illuminated by vibrant colour. As in all of Cossington Smith’s late interiors, we become aware of spaces in which complexity is made to look effortless.

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Interior with wardrobe mirror 1955

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Poinsettias 1931, oil on pulpboard, 73.7 (h) x 59.7 (w) cm, Art Gallery of South Australia Ivor Francis Bequest Fund 1995

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Poinsettias 1931

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Still life with red vase 1962, oil on hardboard, 62.5 (h) x 89.8 (w) cm, Private collection, courtesy of Eva Breuer Art Dealer, Sydney

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Still life with red vase 1962

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Boots, Sketchbook of still life and various subjects (1911), Sketchbook, pencil, paper, 22.8 (h) x 28.8 (w) cm, Collection of the National Gallery of Australia

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Boots, Sketchbook of still life and various subjects (1911)

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, The Bridge in-curve (1930), empera on cardboard, 83.6 (h) x 111.8 (w) cm, National Gallery of Victoria Presented by the National Gallery Society of Victoria, 1967

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, The Bridge in-curve (1930)

Cossington Smith’s daring painting of Enid Cambridge is a portrait of a long-held friendship. Rather than attempting to depict her friend’s features, she conveys her in flamboyant dress, relaxed in an interior world. At the time of Cambridge’s death in 1976, Cossington Smith wrote: ‘Everyone loved Enid. She is my dearest art friend … A special quality of Enid’s is a devoted religious Faith which shone through all her perplexities and difficulties and never left her … Enid is a shining Personality.’ (National Gallery of Australia research library)

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Enid on the sofa 1957

Cossington Smith painted church interiors related to theme of the Second World War. They depict St James’ Anglican Church in Turramurra, a place of great significance for Cossington Smith and her family as their regular place of worship since their arrival in the area in 1913. In the painting Church interior there are women, children and older men. Missing are the men who had gone to war, giving an added poignancy to the image.

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Church interior c.1941-42

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Self portrait 1948, oil on cardboard 40.0 (h) x 30.0 (w) cm, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased 2002

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Self portrait 1948

While in the bush Cossington Smith often adopted Cézanne’s strategy of meditating on the motif in nature for long periods of time. She said that of all the painters she admired, ‘there aren’t any others that impress me like Cézanne ... I think that he painted what I wanted … that was a help, to see that done’. (Interview with Alan Roberts, 1970)

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Bush at evening 1947

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Rushing c.1922, oil on canvas on paperboard, 65.6 (h) x 91.3 (w) cm, Art Gallery of New South Wales Purchased 1967 © Art Gallery New South Wales

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Rushing c.1922

Audio guide to works from the NGA exhibition Grace Cossington Smith: A retrospective exhibition, shown at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 4 March – 13 June 2005

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National Gallery of Australia | Audio Tour | Grace Cossingto...

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