Vida Lahey was born in Pimpama, Queensland in 1882 and enjoyed a highly successful career as a painter. She exhibited extensively in Europe and Australia and is considered to have made a contribution to the introduction of Modernism in Australia. She also taught art in Brisbane for many years, wrote an important book on art in Queensland and was involved in raising funds for the acquisition of works for the Queensland Art Gallery. In 1958 she received an M.B.E. (Member of the British Empire) in recognition of her services to art. Through her career, Lahey became increasingly drawn to still life flower paintings. It was a theme she returned to frequently and she identifies her childhood in the country and her father’s love of flowers as inspiration for this. During childhood, her family was separated for a period of time and her father would bring bunches of wildflowers when he visited. However, it was also the opportunity to explore composition, texture, form and her love of colour that attracted her to the genre. Vida Lahey passed away in 1968. Field flowers reveals the artist’s modernist influences in the simplified forms and background textiles.

Frosty morning by Elioth Gruner depicts cattle grazing on a dairy farm at Emu Plains near the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. Painted in the open air, it captures the white light and crisp atmosphere of the new morning. Bold brushstrokes animate the surface of the painting, while subtle tones unify the composition and create a sense of serenity. Frosty morning belongs to a series of pastoral landscapes painted by Gruner from 1915 to 1919. This series is widely regarded as Gruner’s finest. Each painting within the series is composed looking directly into the rising sun. As a result, forms encircled with light cast elongated shadows across the ground. Elioth Gruner is a key Australian landscape painter of the early 20th century. He sought to capture the visual sensation of the natural environment. The intimate connection he felt with his chosen subject matter is evident throughout his work.