Elaine Haxton

Elaine Haxton (1909-1999), painter, graphic artist and theatre designer, grew up in Sydney. Leaving school at fourteen, she studied at the East Sydney Technical School with Rayner Hoff before travelling to London to work with an advertising agency and further her studies at the Grosvenor School of Art. On the outbreak of war, Haxton returned to Australia via New York and Mexico, where she became interested in murals. In Sydney she became a key member of a group including Russell Drysdale, Donald Friend and William Dobell; the latter painted her for the Archibald Prize in 1941. In 1942 she was commissioned by Walter Magnus to paint scenes from the Ballets Russes production Le Coq D'Or on the walls the restaurant of that name in Ash Street, Sydney. The following year she won the Sulman Prize for these restaurant murals, which had been painted over by the early 1950s. After a period producing ballet costumes and sets in Dutch New Guinea, she won the Crouch Prize in Ballarat in 1946, and that year returned to New York to study theatre design. Ten years later she was the only woman in the Australian delegation to China; the trip inspired much of her later work, which included prints that she had learned to make in Paris and Japan. A six-time Sulman finalist in the 1940s and 1950s, Haxton exhibited extensively. A retrospective exhibition of her prints and drawings was held at Stadia Graphics in 1983, and another at Hamer Mathew galleries in 1990. Her work was included in Creating a Scene at the Victorian Arts Centre in 2004 and Stage Fright: The art of theatre at the National Gallery of Australia in 2005.