From Australia’s Jewish past
Theodora Esther (Theo) Cowan – renowned female sculptor
Theodora Cowan
Theodora was born on 13 November 1868 at Richmond Villa, The Domain, Sydney. She was the daughter of Jewish parents Samuel Cohen, a monetary broker from London, and his English-born wife Elizabeth. It is said that she ‘dabbled in putty from the age of six’. Theo was taught drawing and modelling at Sydney Technical College in 1887-88. On her teacher’s advice, her family moved to Florence in 1889 where Theo continued her tuition through the Accademia di Belle Arti for six years and it is here that she “acquired her technique of her art”. Theo was one of several young Australian sculptors who had studied in Europe.
She received several commissions and in 1894, exhibited at the Ladies’ Gallery, London. She returned to Sydney on the Prinz-Regent Luitpold with her mother and sisters on 27 July 1895. Working in the Strand Arcade, as Theo Cowan, she soon made a reputation with her controversial bust of Sir Henry Parkes. However, she found some prejudice against women sculptors and explained that she was “in the position of a pioneer’’. She became active in the Society of Artists, Sydney, serving as a council member in 1897-98.
During 1897, Theo taught classes at her studio and was invited to submit maquettes to the sculptures competition for the Victoria Markets. James Green, the critic, believed her work ‘showed fertility of imagination, power of composition and executive ability’. Later, she told Frank Dolman, ‘There is a good deal of prejudice here against a woman sculptor. You see I am in the position of a pioneer’. She was commissioned by the trustees of the National Art Gallery of New South Wales to produce marble busts of Frederick du Faur, third president of the Board of Trustees, and Eliezer Levi Montefiore, President of the Board of Trustees from 1889 to 1892. The bust of Eccleston du Faur was the Gallery’s first commission to a Sydney artist.
After the completion of the Eccleston du Faur marble bust, there were questions in Parliament as to why the bust had been commissioned and why the commission had been given to a woman. The bust of Eliezer Levi Montefiore sculptured in 1898 has been assessed as clearly showing her “skill as a portraitist”. She showed her ‘strikingly realistic’ bust of (Sir) Edmund Barton at the Society of Artists’ Spring Exhibition.
Interestingly, in 1897 and its inaugural year, Theo was a finalist in the Wynne Prize. Her work has been represented in the Art Gallery of New South Wales and Parliament House, Canberra.
In September 1901, she went to London and set up a studio in Grosvenor Street, where, in 1904, she held a private viewing. She completed busts and statuettes of well-known people and executed a medal for the Hunterian Society. In 1902, Theo’s name appeared in an illustrated article entitled “Notable Australian Women”, together with world-renowned artists such as Nellie Melba.
In 1906, she won first prize at the Society of Women Artists’ exhibition at the Austral Club with her bronze Will-o-the-Wisp, and in 1908, a gold medal at the Franco-British Exhibition in London for the best piece of child portraiture. She exhibited at the Grafton, Doré, Chenil, and Suffolk Street galleries and again in 1925. Theo completed several portrait busts of notable people, including the one that took pride of place in her one-woman exhibition at London’s Grafton Galleries, that of the Bishop of London, Arthur Winnington-Ingram, which he sat for at Fulham Palace.
After her return to Sydney in 1913, she set up a studio in Darlinghurst before moving in with her mother and sisters at their home – Osiris at 84 Berry Street, North Sydney. Theo worked on commissions for various organisations, such as the Government of New South Wales and the Chamber of Manufacturers. In Sydney, she was a regular exhibitor at the Society of Artists, serving as a council member from 1897 to 1898.
She mainly exhibited with the Society of Women Painters and taught privately. Much of her later work was poetic and mystical, using children as the basis for imagery. In the 1920s, Theo’s artistic career tapered off, though she exhibited watercolours of the Solomon Islands at Swain’s Gallery in 1925. She set up the short-lived Koala Pottery in 1933 and wrote occasional articles for the Sydney Morning Herald.
In April 1949 she was made an honorary life member of the Women’s Club. Later in life she became interested in watercolour painting and moved away from sculpture.
Theo died, unmarried, in hospital on 27 August 1949. In her prime, she had a ‘tall, stately figure, with dark handsome features … such as to impress the memory’. Showing a precocious talent in her early years, she suffered from the antipathy of female artists – the failure to obtain a regular income from her work – and a decline in her artistic powers as she aged. Her later years were spent in genteel penury.
The AJHS acknowledges the following references in the preparation of this story:
Australian Dictionary of Biography – Noel S Hutchison; Wikipedia; Art Gallery of New South Wales; Beginning with Esther – Lysbeth Cohen
