Norah Gurdon was born in Thetford, England in early 1882, the second child of Edwin John Gurdon (Doctor) and his wife Ellen Anne Randall. She and her two siblings, Edwin b. 1881 and Winifred (b.1884) followed their father to Australia on board the Carlisle Castle in 1886 in the company of a nurse. By the time of their arrival, Dr Gurdon had set up a practice for himself in Ballarat, but almost immediately transferred to Learmonth, before settling in Brighton in 1889. It was here that the youngest surviving Gurdon sibling, Brampton, was born in May of the same year.

The family enjoyed a privileged life in Brighton and were members of the congregation of the local St Andrew’s Church. Gurdon and her sister received instruction in all the accomplishments desirable of a well breed young lady of the period and for a time attended Brighton High School for girls, where she excelled in needlework. But plagued by a decade of professional mishaps and incidences that kept his name regularly in the press for all the wrong reasons, Dr Gurdon made the decision to sell his estate and move his practice to the rural New South Wales town of Condobolin, in 1899, leaving his wife and 4 children behind.  

In 1901, Gurdon registered as a student at the National Gallery Art School with friends Janet Cumbrae Stewart and Jessie Traill, where she studied drawing under Frederick McCubbin until 1903 when she was awarded second prize at the annual school exhibition for drawing from antique.   In 1904, Gurdon progressed to the School of Painting where she was to continue her studies under Bernard Hall, though he was away in England for much of the time during which his student’s were left in the capable hands of their old drawing master. McCubbin’s influence can be seen in her love of the Australian landscape and her impressionistic handling. In the painting room, students progressed to drawing life subjects and in 1904, Gurdon received 3^rd prize for Drawing a head from life at the school’s annual exhibition.

Gurdon completed her studies a year later than her friends, leaving in 1908.  In 1907, she was registered as teaching a drawing and painting class at Toorak College, a school for girls, though there is no evidence of her continuing to teach past that year, so it may not have suited her. She also submitted pictures to the landmark First Australian exhibition of Women’s Work, held in Melbourne the same year. She submitted at least 2 pictures to the Black and White section of the exhibition; one, titled Nancy, appeared in the Best Portrait category, and The Pierrot in Best Figure study, though neither received any accolades.

As with her fellow students, Gurdon was a member of the Victorian Artists’ Society (VAS) which was at the centre of much of the group’s professional development and social life following their school years. They exhibited at the bi-annual exhibitions and reveled in the annual Bal Masque.  In 1908, Gurdon and her friends formed an artist body exclusively for ex-gallery students which they called The Waddy Club. Early members, including Charles Wheeler, Cumbrae Stewart, Dora Wilson, William Beckwith McInnes, Charlotte James and Ruth Sutherland, regularly met at the studios in Temple Court and held their first exhibition at the Guildhall in June the following year, to good reviews. The group held one more exhibition under this banner before renaming themselves Twelve Melbourne Painters.

Although Gurdon was attracted to the Australian landscape, it was her figure work that received the most accolades.  In 1910 she exhibited Heirlooms (Figure 1) at the Spring exhibition of the Victorian Artists’ Society and received the rare honour of having it reproduced in the Weekly Times. The following year, she entered Tottie (Figure 2) into the Prahran Painting Competition and was awarded fist prize. It too was reproduced in the press. Under the Window (Figure 3) was later selected for inclusion in the Exhibition of Australian Art held in London in 1923, as well as the British Empire Exhibition in 1924.  Today, most of her work that has made its way into state collections are also figure paintings.

Personal tragedy struck the Gurdon siblings when their mother died suddenly at their Armadale home on the 13^th August 1912. A coronial inquest heard testimony from both sisters who explained that they had spent an uneventful evening with their mother until she took a bath from hot water carted from the kitchen. She returned from her bath wheezing and requested more hot water so she could inhale the steam, but it did not easy her breathing. The sisters put her bed which quickly induced a fit of coughing, so their raised her up and called for the doctor who, despite arriving quickly to the home, did not arrive in time to save her life. The coroner determined that she died of suffocation from acute oedema of the lungs, likely as a result of the inhaled water vapors. With their eldest brother working as a overseer for Bunda Bunda station at Richmond, located between Townsville and Mount Isa in the north of Queensland, their father returned to Melbourne from his new posting in West Australia to settle his wife’s affairs.

With mounting unrest across Europe, Norah made the decision to leave Australia for England on board the SS Shropshire in April 1914 with the intention of furthering her studies. She took a studio at 404 Fulham Road, in London, from which she later held an exhibition of her work in July 1915. She had only been in England for a couple of months before Britain declared war on Germany on the 4^th August 1914 at which point Norah registered as a VAD with the British committee of the French Red Cross. Following her training, she was sent to La Croisic in the south of Brittany where the matron was the only member of the staff who spoke English. Long hard hours of work left little time for painting though defiance of regulation, spent her leave sketching the landscape in England and France. She remained at her duties, caring for the sick and injured, for a further six months after the armistice before returning to England where she was reunited with friends Jessie Traill and Vida Lahey.

The trio returned to France together to see first-hard how she’d come through the war, paying their respects to those who had lost their lives in battle, one of whom was Norah’s eldest brother Edwin. He had enlisted in July 1915 and died at the Somme in August the following year. Her younger brother, Brampton, had followed his brother to war in February 1916 and was one of the lucky ones who returned home.  Perhaps wanting to be close to his kids, Edwin senior resigned from his position as resident magistrate and district medical officer in Derby Western Australia and returned to England in January 1916.

Norah final returned home to Australia sometime between the end of 1919 and the beginning of 1920 to pick up the pieces of her career. She staged her first exhibition at the Athenaeum Gallery during May of 1920, followed by two more the following year; the first at the Queensland Art Society’s Gallery in Brisbane in April, and the second at Margaret McLean’s Gallery in Melbourne. She also returned to exhibiting with the Victorian Artists’ Society and later also joined the Women Painters and the Women’s Art Club.

It was during a few weeks’ vacation spent in a cottage at Mooroolbark in the company of Elma Roche and Madge Freman in September of 1922 that Norah fell in love with the Dandenong Ranges that would inspire much of her future work. She and her sister purchased a property together in Grange Road, Kalorama that same year and with the help of her brother, commenced building a home. She would also set up her studio there.

The pair moved in to their home in 1924 and while Norah continued to paint and exhibit, Winifred turned her hand to farming strawberries. Life was idyllic and they made close friends of their neighbours, who visited often, along with artist friends from the city.  Norah began to work a loom and became interested in weaving. She wove rugs and other household items for their home as well as handbags which she began showing at the annual Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria exhibition in 1926.

The death of her father in England on the 19^th November prompted the sisters to return to the continent in January the following year. Despite it being a short trip, she made plans to briefly catch up with Dora Wilson and Pegg Clarke, who were enjoying an adventurous road trip around Europe in car they dubbed “hot stuff”. Several months after her return to Australia, Norah held an exhibition of the pictures produced during that trip at The New Gallery in Melbourne titled Record of a Short Tour Abroad. She would return to England one last time in 1938 on board the German Cargo Ship Necker. Once again, she was sailing to a continent on the brink of war. She planned to remain in England for 10 months during which she visited Jessie Traill who had been living with a recently widowed friend in Northumberland, the pair catching up in Rotterdam. It has also been recorded that Norah exhibited a watercolour at the 1938 Salon though there is no sign of her name in the catalogue for that year. Probably one of the main purposes of the trip however, was to further develop her skills in weaving which she studied under Mrs Ethel Mary Mairet, a pioneer in English handweaving. The school was in Ditchling, Sussex where Norah lived for a short time in a caravan on site. She also visited Kersey, the town famed for the coarsely woven Kersey cloth and made a study of one of its streets titled Kersey, Suffolk (Figure 4).

During the Second World War, Norah conducted a working group who spent long hours making camouflage nets, possibly as part of her Red Cross work. She felt deeply for the suffering of her fellow man and generously donated pictures and woven rugs to aid various patriotic funds and gave the proceeds of several exhibitions to causes including the Red Cross Prisoners of War Fund. Although she continued to paint and exhibit after the war, her energy was waning, and she began to slow down. In 1950, her brother Brampton passed away, followed in 1957 by her sister Winifred. Norah was the last surviving sibling, none of whom had married. She continued to live on her property in Kalorama amongst her friends and neighbours until she too passed away on the 27^th June 1974 at the age of 92 years.