Anne Dangar

Anne Dangar (1 December 1885 – 4 September 1951) was an Australian painter and potter.

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. 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. She held an exhibition in 1932 at the Musée d'Annonay, in Annonay. She contributed to the development and understanding of modernism, particularly cubism, in Australia through her 21 year correspondence with Grace Crowley and other Australian artists. Crowley kept the letters and gave them to the Mitchell Library and they were subsequently collated and edited by Helen Topliss.

Her letters to Grace Crowley reveal much about the difficulties with which Dangar supported herself and her art at this time. 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.

Works 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 as well as in many state and regional galleries, and in major French collections such as the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris. A significant number of her works are held in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia and the Art Gallery of News South Wales.

Exhibitions Solo exhibitions of her work include: Anne Dangar at Moly-Sabata: Tradition and Innovation, National Gallery of Australia, 13 Jul-28 Oct 2001. Anne Dangar Ceramiste: Le cubism au quotidian, Musee de Valence, 26 Jun 2016-26 Feb 2017. Anne Dangar: Ceramics from Moly-Sabata, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 11 Aug-21 Oct 2018. Her work has also been exhibited in several group shows including: Intrepid Women: Australian Women Artists in Paris 1900-1950, S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney, 6 Jan-11 Mar 2018. Abstraction: Celebrating Australian Women Abstract Artists, National Gallery of Australia touring exhibition, 25 Feb-26 Aug 2017. Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now, Part One, National Gallery of Australia, 14 Nov 2020-19 May 2021.