Constance Stokes

Stokes returned from a European honeymoon in 1934, but she produced few works in the years immediately following. Although the Collins Street apartment had become a full-time studio for Stokes, only two paintings and two sketches from the period are known. The most notable is The Village (c.1933–1935), influenced, according to Stokes' own account, by the post-impressionist and portraitist Augustus John. This work was hung in the inaugural exhibition of the Contemporary Art Society, held at the National Gallery of Victoria. It was included in a travelling exhibition that appeared in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1941 and later in Canada.[11] In 1946, Stokes presented the work to the National Gallery of Victoria.[12]

Girl in Red Tights (1948), one of Stokes' best-known and well-regarded paintings

In the mid-twentieth century, there were divisions in the Melbourne art scene, which became intertwined with the complex cultural politics of the Cold War era. In the late 1940s, there was a move against modernism in art, and tonalism came into favour. Partly as a reaction to this development, artist George Bell established an exhibiting group called the Melbourne Contemporary Artists in 1940. Bell was a former war artist and influential member of the Victorian artistic establishment, who after World War II was appointed to teach at the National Gallery of Victoria's painting school.[13] Influenced by Bell,[6] Stokes was among the artists for whom modernism was a strong influence, and who exhibited with the Melbourne Contemporary Artists.[2] Other members of the group included Russell Drysdale and Sali Herman.[14]

Stokes' artistry endured, while that of some of her modernist colleagues did not. By 1945, when the Melbourne Contemporary Artists held one of their exhibitions, art critic Alan McCulloch observed that the works were increasingly lacking in originality and that the former standards of the group were being maintained by only a few members. One of those was Stokes, whose work The Family he praised as "strongly designed and sensitively modelled".[15] The following year, though, McCulloch was more upbeat, describing the show as their best to date, while again complementing Stokes on her "rich and opulent pictures".[16] Six years later, when the group exhibited in 1952, the critic for Melbourne's Argus was as unimpressed as had been McCulloch in 1945. Suggesting that the show demonstrated that Melbourne's art scene lacked innovation, he nevertheless singled out a small number of works for praise. One of these was Stokes' Christ with Simon and Andrew, which he thought showed "richness and feeling".[17]

While Stokes was being praised at home in Melbourne, one of her portraits was among six paintings owned by the National Gallery of Victoria that were loaned for an exhibition on the other side of the country, in Perth. The city's newspaper, The West Australian, chose Stokes' picture to illustrate its story on the exhibition. Calling it Girl Drying Her Hair, the paper described the work as "notable for its patient handling, use of bright colour and skilful blending of figure and background".[18] The National Gallery of Victoria refers to the work as Woman Drying Her Hair,[19][notes 1] which it had acquired in 1947 at the behest of curator and artist Daryl Lindsay.[22] It was soon to travel a great deal further than to Perth.

In 1953, at the request of Prime Minister Robert Menzies and the British Arts Council, an exhibition of the works of twelve Australian artists was assembled. It was shown in London, five regional British cities, and at the Venice Biennale. Of the twelve artists selected for inclusion, only two were from Victoria, the rest being from New South Wales; Stokes was one of the Victorians.[22][23] Her three works, including Woman Drying Her Hair,[22] hung alongside those of Australia's most prominent mid-twentieth-century artists, including Arthur Boyd, Russell Drysdale, William Dobell, Sidney Nolan, Lloyd Rees, Donald Friend and Frank Hinder.[23] Despite these prominent painters being selected for inclusion, when the exhibition appeared in London, Stokes' Girl in Red Tights drew critical attention and acclaim. Admired by the director of the National Gallery Sir Philip Hendy, the work was proclaimed by the art critic at The Times as the "best picture in London that week".[24] Some artists in Sydney were not so impressed. A meeting of the Royal Art Society of New South Wales urged Prime Minister Menzies to intervene, members describing the paintings as "the worst ever gathered in one place".[25] However, the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board member who announced the exhibition considered that it would represent the most substantial promotion Australian art would have experienced to that time.[23] The following year, Joseph Burke, Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne, praised Stokes' painting, making particular reference to her work that had so entranced viewers at the 1953 exhibition. "Constance Stokes", he wrote, was a painter who "announced the pursuit of the classical ideal as [her] aim. [Her] Girl in Red Tights, with its Venetian richness of colouring, ably sustains the monumental harmony of the classical tradition."[26]

Religious subjects appear regularly in Stokes' paintings; one such work, The Baptism, is in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria. Despite her recurring attention to such subjects, however, the artist entered the Blake Prize for Religious Art only once, in 1953. Esmond George, critic at Adelaide newspaper The Mail, admired the (unidentified) work as having "strong art interest".[27] Stokes' interest in the Prize was not so strong as to prompt her to enter again. She told an interviewer that "abstract painting took over".[28]

Eric Stokes died unexpectedly in 1962, an experience which left Constance bereft; a long-time friend said that she never really recovered.[29] Faced with a substantial mortgage to service, Stokes returned to work: painting. Two years later, she opened her first one-woman show in over thirty years. It comprised 43 works, with the 27 paintings priced dearly, at upwards of 150 guineas. The exhibition was a success both financially and critically: Stokes earned over 4000 guineas, and the exhibition attracted praise from art historian and critic Bernard William Smith.[30] Throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, she painted and held shows; this later phase of her work was based on a stronger, if lighter, colour palette and reflected the influence of the art of Henri Matisse, whom Stokes admired.[2][31] There was also a change in her subject matter, from "classically conceived" still lifes, groups of figures and nudes, to more decorative themes.[2] Stokes' works continued to be well received,[32] having been included in the 1975 exhibition Australian women artists at the University of Melbourne, and the Regional Galleries Association of Victoria's 1977 touring exhibition The heroic years of Australian painting, 1940–1965.[2] Stokes' last painting was Alice Tumbling Down the Rabbit Hole, painted around 1989; she died in Melbourne in 1991.[2]