Artists - Ethel Anderson

Ethel Anderson, ca. 1905, by Freeman Brothers
Hand-coloured photograph MIN 348

Author, poet and artist Ethel Campbell Louise Anderson, nee Mason (1883-1958) was born in England to Australian parents and brought up in Sydney. In 1904, she married Major A.T. Anderson in Bombay and the couple lived in India until 1914 with their daughter Bethia (born 1907). After 10 more years in England, the family settled in Sydney's North Shore in 1924.

Ethel Anderson's Turramurra home, Ball Green, became something of an open house for artists and writers including neighbour and fellow artist Grace Cossington-Smith. Although often remembered for her work as an artist, Anderson was also an accomplished essayist and poet. Working from her home in Turramurra, she contributed to various periodicals in England, America, India and Australia as well as publishing several volumes of verse, some of which was later set to music.

The Library has an extensive collection of material relating to Ethel Anderson's life and work, including photographs of Anderson with her family and at work with the Turramurra Wall Painters.

In 1929 Ethel Anderson and members of the Turramurra Wall Painters group painted murals on the walls of the Children’s Chapel in the crypt of St. James Church, Sydney. The Turramurra Wall Painters, founded by Anderson, included her daughter Bethia Anderson, Roland Wakelin and Roy de Maistre. The murals on the wall of the Children's Chapel depict scenes from the carol 'I saw three ships'. Ethel Anderson wrote that the group's aim was to 'give the tiny room the brilliance of a page from the Book of Kells'.

Design for children's chapel in St. James' Church, 1929, by Ethel Anderson
Oil painting ML 1078

Ethel Anderson always had a passion for life, art and literature. As her hearing deteriorated in old age, she began using a large silver ear trumpet, often adorned with colourful pieces of fabric to match her dresses. She died on 4 August 1958 at her home in Turramurra.

 > View full catalogue record for the Ethel Anderson collection of photographs, drawings and realia