Kathleen

Marjorie Fletcher was one of a small group of outstanding female sculptors working in Sydney in the 1930s. Many of these women, including Fletcher, had studied at the East Sydney Technical College under Rayner Hoff, arguably Australia’s best-known sculptor of the twentieth century. In the early 1930s Fletcher’s work was highly regarded and she exhibited with the Society of Artists and the Society of Women Painters, but during the economically challenging times of the late 1930s she turned to commercial art and never returned to sculpture. Like so many female Australian Modernists, her work was forgotten for many decades before being reclaimed by the artistic community in the late 1990s.

Kathleen exemplifies the artist’s immense skill, with its fluidity of line, naturalistic pose and fine rendering of the young girl’s face. This work was unknown to the art world until the original plaster of Kathleen was discovered by the artist’s son at auction and then cast in bronze following careful processes established by the artist.

Tansy Curtin, Curator, International Art pre–1980