Dame Elizabeth Couchman DBE (1876–1982), political activist, grew up in Geelong. She joined the Australian Women's National League (AWNL) in 1910 and was appointed AWNL president in 1927. In 1932 she was the first woman appointed to the Australian Broadcasting Commission board. Having brought the AWNL into the United Australia Party fold, Couchman stood (unsuccessfully) as the UAP candidate for Melbourne in the 1943 Federal election. The following year she instigated the AWNL’s merge with the new Liberal Party and in return secured equal representation for women at all levels of the party’s Victorian division. She was metropolitan vice-president of the Victorian Liberal Party for six years and served on the party's state council into her eighties (she died at 106). Sir Robert Menzies is said to have stated that Couchman 'would have been the best cabinet minister I could have wished for'.
Aileen Dent was the most-exhibited woman artist in the Archibald Prize, with 63 works hung between 1921 and 1962. Her portraits were judged by one reviewer in 1945 to be 'pleasing pictures … usually striking in their likeness'. Here Dent has depicted Couchman wearing her Order of the British Empire Medal, which she received in 1960 for her contribution to public and patriotic services.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Susan Webster, step-granddaughter of Dame Elizabeth Couchman, 2015
© Estate of Aileen Dent
Mrs Suzie Webster (1 portrait)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
Well behaved women seldom make history, as the saying goes, and the National Portrait Gallery, consequently, is full of awesome Australian women who refused to conform to narrow ideas about their place and their worth.
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