Maude Edith Victoria Fleay
Australian wildlife artist (1869–1965)
Maude Edith Victoria Glover Fleay (1869–1965), was one of Australia's first wildlife artists. She was known for her paintings of Australian marsupials.
Biography
Fleay was born in 1869 in Sulky Gully, Australia. She studied drawing at the School of Mines, Ballarat, where she was taught by David Davies. She also studied under Frederick McCubbin at the National Gallery School in Melbourne. Her aunt, Elizabeth Glover, owned "Gracedale Hotel" in Healesville. Fleay did a painting of "Gracedale", which hung in Elizabeth Glover's home in Gardenvale.
She exhibited with the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors and she was a member of the Victorian Artists Society. In 1938 she exhibited at the Athenaeum Gallery with fellow women artists Annie Gates and Henrietta Maria Gulliver. Glover Fleay exhibited at the Leighton Galleries in 1945 where her work was commended for its "rather unfeminine strength and confidence of approach." Noted artist Arthur Streeton said her paintings "reflect great sympathy with and knowledge of the animals." She was also a writer and music teacher, and art director of the Daylesford School of Mines.
“Maude Edith Victoria Fleay” enters the record as australian wildlife artist (1869–1965). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Maude, Edith and Victoria can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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