Nornie Gude

Eleanor Constance "Nornie" Gude (Dec 8 1915 – Jan 24 2002) was an Australian artist.

Early life Gude was born in 1915 in Ballarat, Victoria to Stella Rehfisch and Walter Gude, musician and violin teacher, and conductor of the St Patrick's Cathedral orchestra and choir in Ballarat. Her parents met when Stella was 27 and the 42-year old never-married Walter was teaching her the violin. While there she was the Art Editor for The SMB, the magazine of the Ballarat School of Mines in 1934. She won the esteemed MacRobertson Scholarship in art worth £100 a year. She later went on to the National Gallery School from 1936 to 1939, studying with Sidney Nolan and Charles Bush, and became the first woman to win the National Gallery Students Travelling Scholarship. She exhibited with the Victorian Artists Society and the Australian Water Color Institute in Sydney. Leveson Street Gallery listed Gude amongst the artists it represented in a 1974 issue of The Bulletin. In 1988 she was a finalist for the 'Sail and Bicentenary award' at the ACTA Bicentenary Maritime Art Awards Exhibition with her work "'The Bounty' on Sydney Harbour."

Nornie met her husband, fellow painter Laurence Scott Pendlebury, while studying together at the Gallery School. They had two children, Anne and Andrew, both of whom followed artistic pursuits. The family lived in Caulfield, Nornie painting in her studio there.

She once said about art "You spend your first 20 years learning the technique and the next 20 years losing it."

Awards

1941 - National Gallery School Landscape Prize 1948 - F. E. Richardson Prize (Geelong Art Gallery) 1951 - F. E. Richardson Prize 1953 - Perth Art Gallery Prize 1958 - Voss Smith Prize 1970 - Pring Prize 1988 - Doug Moran Naval Prize 1990 - Doug Moran National Portrait Prize

Exhibitions

1954 - Artists for Peace exhibition, Tye's Gallery 1988 - 'Evespan' - Some Australian Women Artists 1920-1988, Albury Regional Art Centre