Thesis title: Women in the Imperial Art World: Anglo-Australian Women Artists and Their Transnational Careers, 1885 – 1907.

Supervisors: Dr. Keren Hammerschlag, Dr Sarah Scott, Professor Angela Woollacott

Were there so few ‘great’ women artists in England in the late nineteenth century as the Victorian-era art critic John Ruskin opined? Likewise, in Australia were women artists equally as invisible in Victorian and Edwardian society, as concluded by the Marxist art historian Bernard Smith eighty-seven years later? This thesis is preoccupied with these questions because not only does this preconception endure in traditional approaches to art history, but ’greatness’ and ‘invisibility’ are foundational concepts in key feminist texts. ‘Women in the Imperial Art World’ analyses new evidence about the unexpected contribution Anglo-Australian women artists made in the late nineteenth century and reveals their remarkable achievements in the face of discrimination and sexism.