Torso

Jean Broome-Norton was a key member of a group of primarily female sculptors who contributed to the advancement of sculptural practice in Australia between the two world wars. Born in Sydney, the artist enrolled in the East Sydney Technical College in 1929, becoming a student of, and later an assistant to, the celebrated sculptor, Rayner Hoff. Hoff’s promotion of a style of sculpture built on classical traditions but inherently modern in its vitality, realism and subject matter was an important influence on Broome-Norton. She became best known for her powerful depictions of women as the archetypes of a healthy and strong modernity, expressed through classical proportions and Greek and Roman myths.

After graduating with honours in 1934, Broome-Norton returned to East Sydney Technical College as a part-time teacher and created this rare, surviving plaster sculpture. Free of a grand narrative, Torso, 1935, demonstrates the artist’s advanced skill in sculpting the human form based on a life model. Although the torso is classically fragmented, its naturalistic form – with slumped shoulders and a relaxed stomach – exudes an inner warmth and vitality. The artist later reflected on the onerous responsibilities placed upon the students in life-modelling classes, noting that they were required to ‘build wooden and metal frames and armatures to support the clay models, sculpt, make gelatine moulds and finally cast their own works in plaster’.

Elle Freak, Associate Curator of Australian Paintings and Sculpture