Photo: Self Portrait, 1911 Australian-born Janet Cumbrae Stewart is now considered one of the most technically masterly women artists of the 1920s and 30s. Born in 1883 in Brighton, near Melbourne, Janet Agnes Stewart (later to adopt the name Cumbrae Stewart around 1900) was to become one of the most well known and highly sought after artists of the early 20th century. Despite the prominence she received in her lifetime, Cumbrae Stewart has receded from public attention, her works circulating among private collections and family members for the past half century. However, at the turn of the 21st century, nearly 50 years after her death, interest in this enigmatic figure has been revived with an exhibition of her work at the Mornington Peninsula Gallery, Melbourne, in 2003. She is can now to be considered as one of the most technically masterful and culturally astute female artists of the 1920s and 30s. ...Her pastel work predominantly centers on studies of the female nude... these women are characterized by a lack of superfluous background detail and a painterly application of hand-softened pastel. Her figures are rendered with subtle tonality giving them a sculptural quality, softened by hints of lace or silk that emphasize the smoothness of the female form and its fragility. (http://www.chrisbeetles.com/artists/stewart-janet-agnes-cumbrae-1883-1960.html) ...Cumbrae Stewart (she dispensed with the hyphen and signed her work in this manner) devoted the most significant section of her oeuvre to studies of the female nude in pastel. Her nudes were the subject of a monograph by John Shirlow published in Melbourne in 1921. While influenced by the academic draftsmanship of Bernard Hall, Cumbrae Stewart imparted a sensuous and graceful quality to her rendering of women's bodies. While her oeuvre includes water-color and oil studies of landscapes and portraits she is chiefly known for use of pastel. (http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cumbrae-stewart-janet-agnes-5842) undefined

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