PROVENANCE
Paul & Kerry Barber Collection Art Auction, Dunbar Sloane 08/05/2002

Helen Stewart began studying under Harry Linley Richardson at the Technical School in Wellington in 1921. In 1927 she held her first exhibition but soon left for London leaving soon after to further her training.

The next year she lived in Paris and attended the Académie Colarossi and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. She returned to the antipodes in 1930, arriving in Sydney to join her family who had moved from Wellington to live there. There she attended the Julian Ashton Art School.

In 1931 Stewart entered the Grosvenor School under Ian McNab. She returned to Paris in 1932 and had a full year studying with Yadav Vytllayl at André Lhote's atelier.

Stewart was a modernist painter, influenced by European and British post-impressionist art, specifically Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger and the Camden Town artists. While studying with André Lhote she developed an appreciation for the theory of the Golden ratio, the balancing of spatial and colour relationships.

Stewart was a contemporary of Dorothy Kate Richmond, Frances Hodgkins, and Gwen Knight. After returning to Australia in 1934 she became a member of the avant-garde Contemporary Art Society. In 1938 150 Years of Australian Art anniversary catalogue featured her painting Freesias.

In Australia she exhibited with Margaret Preston and Grace Cossington Smith. Although she was initially rejected by the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts she did later exhibit with them. She also exhibited with the The Group in Christchurch in 1948.

Stewart returned to New Zealand after the war settling in Lowry Bay, Wellington. She was a founding member of the Thursday Group art collective and continued to paint until her death in 1983. Stewart was included in Anne Kirker's publication New Zealand Women Artists: a Survey of 150 Years.