Clarice Beckett is recognised as one of Australia's most important Modernist artists. Despite a talent for portraiture and a keen public appreciation for her still-lifes, Beckett preferred the solo, outdoor process of painting landscapes. She relentlessly painted sea and beachscapes, rural and suburban scenes, often enveloped in the atmospheric effects of early mornings or evening. Her subjects were often drawn from the Melbourne bayside suburb of Beaumauris, where she lived for most of her life, caring for her ailing parents during the day and spending time around dawn and dusk painting. Her untimely death in 1935 at the age of forty-five coincided with what has come to be an unrivalled period in women's art in Australia, one that was explored recently in the Gallery's exhibition, Modern Australian Women: paintings & prints 1925-1945 Beckett was also the subject of a highly successful solo exhibition which toured nationally (including AGSA) in 1999.