Judy Cassab AO CBE completed her first portrait when she was 12, and later said painting ‘was the only thing in life I wanted to do’. Her studies at the Academy of Art in Prague ended when war broke out in 1939; she later resumed her studies in Budapest before adopting false papers and ‘going underground’ to escape the persecution of Jewish people. When Cassab began painting again, in 1945, she wrote that she’d ‘never let this happen again, this parting from paint and brush’. Soon after arriving in Sydney in 1951 with her husband and two sons, she began securing portrait commissions, and in 1955 her portrait of model Judy Barraclough won the Australian Women’s Weekly Portrait Prize. The win helped establish Cassab’s reputation for portraits that were distinctly modern yet sufficiently traditional, leading to further portraits of sitters from the fashion world – including June Dally-Watkins OAM (1927–2020). Dally-Watkins rose to prominence in the late 1940s with her modelling work for David Jones and magazines including the Women’s Weekly. In 1950 she founded the June Dally-Watkins School for deportment and etiquette, and in 1951 established Australia’s first modelling agency.
Purchased with funds provided by the Annual Appeal 2023
© Judy Cassab/Copyright Agency, 2024
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
Aimee Board traces Judy Cassab’s path to the Australian outback, arriving at the junction of inspiration and abstraction.
The oil portrait of Sir Frank Packer KBE by Judy Cassab was gifted to the National Portrait Gallery in 2006.
