Edith Knox (1855–1942), matriarch, was a daughter of Janet and Scottish-born merchant and businessman Joseph Scaife Willis, who was president of the Sydney Chamber of Commerce and a founding director of the Sydney Exchange Co. Born in Sydney, Edith grew up in a house called Greycliffe in Vaucluse. In 1878 she married Edward Knox, managing director of the Colonial Sugar Refining Co. and later an administrator at the University of Sydney and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Five years later they moved into Rona in Bellevue Hill, which was destined to be home to five generations of the family. Ned and Edith Knox had four daughters. One of their granddaughters, Helen Rutledge, returned to live at Rona in 1978. In her family history, My Grandfather's House (1986), she writes that pictures of her grandmother 'do not do her justice; in most of them she looks sad or stern … she did not smile much with her mouth, but she did with her lovely eyes'. Edith contributed to various charitable causes, including the Queen's Jubilee Fund and the 19th Battalion Comforts Fund.
William Beckwith (Bill) McInnes won the Archibald Prize seven times, writing in defence of his conservative work that 'in Australia we have not been bitten by Cubism or Futurism or other isms … and I am glad of it'.
Gift of Mrs Caroline Philippa Parker 2005. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
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