A Study in Brown – Part One

/ Garrulous Gwendoline

In the 1960s, when I was still in primary (elementary) school, I lived with my Aunty Myra most school holidays. Aunty Myra was chatty, her sons were grown up, and I was the daughter she’d never had, so I was the recipient of hundreds of her stories.

One of those related to a painting that was hanging in the New South Wales Art Gallery. Among other things, she said it was of a girl sitting in a chair with her face resting in her hand, that it was a study in brown, and that the sitter, who was long dead, was related to us. 

As a young adult I’d sometimes wander aimlessly through the gallery. Aunty Myra must have told me that it was in the Grand Court on the right as you entered the gallery, as that is where I would concentrate my search, but I never saw anything resembling her description.

Then, like a lot of Aunty Myra’s stories, I forgot about the painting.

The story moves forward to early 2016. I was heavily into family history research by then. I came across a tree on Ancestry.com that included my grandmother’s sister, Lucy. Lucy was married but in 1926 died young and childless, and we knew little else of her.

Turns out that Lucy’s husband re-married, and they had a daughter who was now in her late eighties! It was her granddaughter, JA, who was compiling the family history tree. 

After a phone call between those two women, a story about a painting emerged, and along with it, a good description.

  • Lucy’s husband used to call the painting ‘study in brown’, as it was all in brown tones.  But grandmother didn’t think that was the name on the plaque.
  • She’d seen it frequently in her childhood, up until it was taken off display in the early 40s (which accounts for why I couldn’t find it).
  • The artist’s name was unknown, but he was not one of our “majors”.
  • It was a realistic painting, the background was very dark, it was of her head and shoulders with the body turned away but her face looking toward the viewer.
  • Lucy’s face was in a serious pose, she was not ‘pretty’ but her face was pleasant.
  • She was clothed, her features fading into the background.

At that, Aunty Myra’s story came flooding back.

Game on!

Time to find the painting, learn who painted it, and hopefully, marry that back to great-aunt Lucy Elizabeth Osterman nee Creft. 

More in the next post.

24 thoughts on “A Study in Brown – Part One”

  2. Pingback: “A Study in Brown – Part Three, The Reveal” | The Reluctant Retiree

  4. Pingback: A Study in Brown – Part Two | The Reluctant Retiree

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