The Lost Mother was given to me by a student who knew that I had studied at the NGV Gallery School

What a consuming read The Lost Mother is for women like me who discovered Constance Stokes and all of those women lost to students who were taught by mentors who considered that the history of art in Melbourne prior to International Modernism was too cringeworthy to teach

Try Jim Alexander, Important Women Artists gallery in the 1980s East Malvern
Sorry this is a quick mail in between classes
thank you so much for your passion to discover the truth

Jenny Darling

what amazing coincidences! Do you have an image of the portrait of your mother that you could email me? annesummers@pacific.net.au I would love to see it. Such a small world, not just the art world, but Melbourne and Australia and readers and writers. Thank you for sharing this.
Anne

I have just read your book and loved it. Pity I hadn’t read it before I you walked past me in Brunswick St recently. I would have spoken to you but seeing we had only met once at Sasha Soldatow’s I thought it would be inappropriate.
Of course Sasha (if he were alive) and his mother would have been able to enlighten you on the Russian community in Melb. I suspect Muriel Maxwell (Russian teacher at Monash Uni married to Prof Ian Maxwell Melb Uni) and Nina Cristensen may have also. These people are all dead but they may be leads for you.

I would like to talk to you re Dorothy Braund and Constance Stokes. Constance Stokes lived across the road from us and was a friend of my mothers in Winifred Cres. DB I have known all my life. She is in a nursing home now and for some time I have been wanting to explore how to write up her life – not that I am the person to do it. I would like to talk to Brenda Niall about it. But I would be interested in knowing when you interviewed her and how recently that was?

10 years ago Dot asked me to curate her work but Rod Eastgate was not pleased about that and persuaded her that as her agent he should control all the artworks. She also asked me to “do something with all the drawers of letters oneday” and I am trying to find out where they have gone in the cleaning up of her house. Dot has gone “dotty” but in talking about the past she is still quite clear and lucid.

For some time I have thought that DB has not received the recognition she deserved although her works are now soldout within an hour of the exhibs opening to people who avidly collect her but do not know her. She was part of the CAS and quite strongly opposed to all the brou ha ha around the Heide group. She was and still is a modernist who maintained and refined her style without following fashion. According to SMorgans book on Clifton Pugh DB was the first critic to review CPs work.

I grew up amongst all these people and have alwasy been amazed by the attention given to some of them over others (like Dot) who deserved greater attention. Even at the current Hiede exhibition on Cubism CS and DB are not included.

I would love to talk to you about some of this and about looking for missing art. DB once had me look for a missing picture of hers and it got v sticky!

Sally Semmens
9415 8585 home
32 Lt Gore St Fitzroy

Hilary Mc Phee knows who I am if you want to discuss.