| Janet Cumbrae Stewart | |
| Birth Name: | Janet Agnes Stewart |
| Birth Date: | 23 December 1883 |
| Birth Place: | Melbourne, Victoria, Australia |
| Death Place: | Melbourne |
| Nationality: | Australian |
| Education: | Melbourne National Gallery School |
| Field: | Painting |
| Partner: | Miss Argemore ffarington "Bill" Bellairs[1] |
Janet Agnes Cumbrae Stewart (23 December 1883 – 8 September 1960) was an Australian painter. She spent the 1920s and 1930s painting in Britain, France and Italy.[2]
Cumbrae Stewart was born on 23 December 1883 in Brighton, Victoria, Australia.[3] She was born Janet Agnes Stewart, the youngest of ten children born to Francis Edward Stewart (1833–1904) and Agnes Park (1843–1927). Janet's eldest brother, Francis William Sutton Stewart, became convinced of a family connection to the Stuarts of Bute and despite never proving the link, adopted "Cumbrae" to his name, and his siblings followed suit.[4] This addition to the name would later serve a greater purpose for Janet, who quickly abandoned the hyphen and identified herself professionally as simply Cumbrae Stewart, and so avoided, to a certain extent, the limitations and scrutiny attached to her sex.
The Stewarts lived a very traditional upper middle class existence, with the boys studying at private school and the three girls receiving their early education at home under the supervision of a governess.[5] As well as her lessons, Cumbrae Stewart also received instruction in several suitable 'past-times' including dancing, piano and drawing; this latter she was instructed by Zena Beatrice Selwyn, who would later marry Cumbrae Stewart's brother Francis in 1906. During her late teens, Cumbrae Stewart joined landscape painter, John Mather, and his students, on outdoor sketching exhibitions.[6]
From 1903 though 1908 Cumbrae Stewart studied at the Melbourne National Gallery School, where she was taught by Lindsay Bernard Hall and Frederick McCubbin.[7] During this time she won a slew of awards: first prize for Drawing from Antique in 1904, Still Life Painting in 1905, Second place for Half Nude Painting and Life Drawing in 1906, and third prize for Drawing a Head from Life in 1903 and third place in the coveted Travelling Scholarship prize in 1908 for The Old Gown in 1908 (first and second places were both awarded to Constance Jenkins).
Following her art education, Cumbrae Stewart rented premises in Melbourne and commenced exhibiting. She participated in the first Exhibition of Women's Work held in Melbourne in 1907, and exhibited with the Victorian Artists Society from 1908 to 1920. She also exhibited with the Queensland Art Society, the Australian Artists Association and the South Australian Society of Arts, as well as the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors. She held her first solo exhibition at the Coles Book Arcade gallery in Collins Street in 1911, from which Bernard Hall purchased a pastel of a head, and Rupert Bunny purchased a landscape.[8] Other solo exhibitions were regularly held at the Athenaeum Hall in Melbourne, Gayfield Shaw's Salon in Sydney and Preece's Gallery in South Australia, under the management of Gayfield Shaw.
In 1922 Cumbrae Stewart travelled to England with her sister, Beatrice Peverill, on board the Aeneas, arriving in Liverpool on 21 July.