Anne Dangar

Dangar was born in Kempsey, a town on the mid-north coast of New South Wales, the daughter of Otho Orde Dangar, who was a member of the Legislative Assembly and Elizabeth Dangar. From 1906 Dangar studied art in Sydney with Horace Moore-Jones and then at the Julian Ashton Art School in Sydney. Dangar began teaching there in 1920, while also working at the book publishing company Angus & Robertson.[2]

In 1926, Dangar travelled to France with her lifelong friend and correspondent Grace Crowley and attended André Lhote's Academy in Paris and his summer school at Mirmande. Dangar returned to Sydney in 1929, but found resistance in Sydney to the cubist-influenced style she had developed in France.[3][4] Like her friends Dorrit Black and Grace Crowley, Dangar was strongly influenced by the Modernist and Cubist art movements she was exposed to in Paris.[3]

Dangar travelled back to France in 1930 and joined Moly-Sabata, an artists' commune established by Albert Gleizes. Her letters to Grace Crowley reveal much about the difficulties with which Dangar supported herself and her art at this time.[5] Dangar held an exhibition in 1932 at the Musée d'Annonay, in Annonay.[6] Dangar travelled to Morocco in 1939 and spent six months in Fez working with and for, and learning from, local potters. However, political instability and the outbreak of World War II caused her to cut the trip short and she was back in France in 1940.

Dangar lived in Sablons throughout the war and decided to remain there after the war. Anne Dangar died of complications from a stroke at Moly-Sabata on 4 September 1951.[4] She was buried at Serrières, Ardèche, across the river from Moly-Sabata.[1]

Dangar was commissioned in 1934 to create La Vierge et l'enfant Jesu [Virgin and infant Jesus] first acquired by Cesar Geoffray and more recently by the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art [3] The work has been identified as a good example of rustic cubism.[3]

Her work is represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, Powerhouse Museum, Queensland Gallery of Modern Art as well as in many state and regional galleries, and in the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris.

• Andrée Le Coultre

• Harding, Lesley, and Sue Cramer, eds. Cubism and Australian Art. No. 124. The Miegunyah Press, 2009.
• Dangar, Anne; Topliss, Helen, 1946-; Crowley, Grace, 1890-1979 (2000), Earth, fire, water, air : Anne Dangar's letters to Grace Crowley, 1930-1951, Allen & Unwin, ISBN 978-1-86508-241-7CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Gaze, Delia, Mihajlovic, Maja and Shrimpton, Leanda Dictionary of women artists. Fitzroy Dearborn, London; Chicago, 1997.
• Harding, Lesley, and Sue Cramer, eds. Cubism and Australian Art. No. 124. The Miegunyah Press, 2009.