Freda Robertshaw

Freda Rhoda Robertshaw (1916–1997) was an Australian artist and painter of neoclassical figures and landscapes. Her works are represented in major Australian public galleries, and her Standing Nude was considered a key attraction at a 2001 exhibition of Modern Australian Women at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. She studied in their commercial art program until 1937, studying drawing, life drawing, oil painting and watercolour.

Works Robertshaw began painting moody landscapes, but turned to more modernist ideas, influenced by school and her surroundings.

In 1940, the arts writer for The Bulletin declared that Robertshaw's nude painting "the best in the show".

In 1944 (also attributed as 1938

Robertshaw was the first Australian woman artist to paint a fully nude self-portrait with Standing Nude (1944), which was also her last figure painting, representing her break from Meere's influence. Standing Nude was regarded as "the star attraction" of the 2001 Modern Australian Women exhibition, which debuted at the Art Gallery of South Australia. After completing this work, Robertshaw left Meere's studio. and later experimented with landscape and surrealism; one of her surrealist works, Composition (1947), was acquired by the National Gallery of Australia.

In August 2023, The Bushwalkers was identified, having been collected by a grandparent of a family living in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales. The family decided it should be donated to the National Gallery of Australia rather than being sold at auction.

Exhibitions Robertshaw exhibited widely including at the New South Wales Society of Artists and the Royal Artists Society.

In 2005, she was represented in Heaven on Earth, Visions of Arcadia, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre. the National Gallery of Australia, the Gruthers Collection of Women's Art, The University of Western Australia, Perth,

In 1998, Australian Beach Scene (1940), a feminised response to Meere's famous 1940 work Australian Beach Pattern, sold at Sotheby's for $A475,500, a record for an Australian woman artist at the time.