Gwyn Hanssen Pigott AM (1935–2013) was a self-described potter, whose international reputation was built on her exquisite still-life assemblages of refined, spare vessels in subtle colours and shapes. After becoming enchanted by Chinese ceramics at the National Gallery of Victoria as a student, she moved to Mittagong in 1955 to train with Ivan McMeekin, a devotee of Chinese pots. Not long after, she left for England, where she worked with leading potters, and established studios in London and then Achères, France. In 1973 she moved to Tasmania and set up a studio there, and later lived in Queensland. The National Gallery of Victoria mounted a retrospective of her work in 2006. Hanssen Pigott died while in London for a group exhibition at the Erskine, Hall & Coe gallery in Mayfair.
In the early 1960s Hanssen Pigott became friends with sculptor Willow Legge, with whom she stayed during her regular trips in England. As Legge noted: 'Because of the fleeting nature of her visits it was only during the final one that I finally decided it was high time I made a portrait of her when we were both approaching our eighties. Unfortunately I had to finish it posthumously because she suffered her final stroke before it was completed. Luckily I knew her very well and had also taken some good photographs.'
Gift of the artist 2016
© Willow Legge
Willow Legge (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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