Hilda Rix Nicholas – a gorgeous still life, Fresh to the Market
Among the highlights of Moorabool’s December 2025 sale was a previously unrecorded still-life by Hilda Rix Nicholas — sourced from a local family who had kept it since it was painted in the 1920s.
Fresh to the market in every sense of the phrase.
The Artist: Hilda Rix Nicholas (1884–1961)
Few Australian artists have lived lives as dramatic, tragic, and creatively exhilarating as Hilda Rix Nicholas. Today she stands as a central figure in early 20th-century Australian art — a woman whose career spanned Melbourne, Paris, Étaples, Tangier, and finally the rugged Monaro region of New South Wales. Yet despite her international achievements and her unmistakable artistic voice, Rix Nicholas has, until recently, occupied a quieter place in public consciousness.
That is now changing — rapidly. The Art Gallery of New South Wales’ major exhibition “Dangerously Modern: Women Artists Between the Wars” brought her roaring back into national focus, gathering dozens of her finest works from every corner of Australia: glowing Moroccan market scenes, spirited French sketches, and her iconic Australian pastoral images painted at “Knockalong”. Visitors to the exhibition frequently remark that Rix Nicholas feels like a rediscovery — a modernist who pushed boundaries in an era that did not always welcome women pushing anything at all.
A Fresh-to-Market Find
Against the backdrop of this renewed appreciation, the appearance of a previously unrecorded early still-life is genuinely exciting. The work came from a local family who acquired it directly — almost certainly from the artist — in the 1920s, and it has remained in their hands ever since. Single-family provenance of this kind is the gold standard for works on paper and canvas: no auction trail to follow, no dealer markings, no institutional hands. Just the painting and its original owners. Note the frame, an original wooden gesso-gilt example typical of Melbourne frame makers of the early 20th century.
The signature “EH. Rix Nicholas” is in original hand of the artist: the tall looped ‘H’, the distinct segmented “Rix”, and the evenly spaced “Nicholas” — all consistent with her early 1920s Melbourne period. This was a pivotal moment in her career. Having returned from war-torn Europe and the heartbreak of losing both her mother and sister, Rix Nicholas rebuilt her life through painting. In Melbourne she produced a series of still-lifes — intimate, carefully staged studies that reveal both technical command and emotional grounding.
The newly surfaced work is a quintessential example of her still-life period: deep red roses (‘Blackboy’) and sprays of lilac arranged against folds of soft drapery, rendered with a confident brush and a sense of theatre born of Parisian training. Still-lifes by Rix Nicholas are comparatively rare — she is far better known for her figures and her pastoral scenes — and this one has survived in single-family ownership since it was painted, resulting in remarkable condition. It is in every sense a fresh discovery.
