Wild Love: Adelaide Ironside

Talk recorded on Thursday 2 November at the Chau Chak Wing Museum, The University of Sydney,
In her new book Kiera Lindsey uncovers the life of the exuberant colonial painter Adelaide Ironside, from her childhood on the shores of Sydney harbour to the leading artistic circles of Europe where she was celebrated as 'the impersonation of genius'. Join this special book launch and in-conversation with Sue Williams.
Colonial lasses were expected to marry at sixteen, but she wanted to be an artist, not a wife, and she had big ambitions. She wanted to train with the best painters of her day in Europe, to elevate her sex, and to adorn her home town of Sydney with republican frescoes.
Adelaide Ironside was the granddaughter of a convict forger, and the first locally born female professional painter to leave the colonies to train abroad. She astonished the poet Robert Browning with her 'wild and enthusiastic ways', was mentored by John Ruskin, sold her work to the Prince of Wales and won accolades in Rome and London as well as Paris and Sydney. She corresponded regularly with our own Sir Charles Nicholson. Yet today she is largely forgotten.
In her new biography, historian Kiera Lindsey recreates Adelaide's life and her relationship with her mother, Martha, who was her greatest supporter but who also hindered her from fully realising her ambitions. She reveals how romantic mysticism infused Adelaide's life and work, and how the rebellious ideas of the Pre-Raphaelites changed the course of Adelaide's art and career.
About the speakers
Dr Kiera Lindsey is an award-winning historian. For over twenty years she has been enthusiastically exploring historical ideas and deepening our interest in and understandings of the past, via books and articles, radio and podcasts, film and television, teaching and talking. In addition to being the inaugural winner of the Greg Dening Memorial Award in 2009, which is dedicated to esteemed Australian historian, Kiera was awarded an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) in 2018 entitled ‘Speculative biography, historical craft and the case of Adelaide Ironside’.This funding allowed Kiera to visit over twenty archival holdings across Australia, England, Ireland, Italy and Wales as she followed in the footsteps of colonial artist, Adelaide Ironside, and published work-in-progress reflections regarding the speculative methods she developed to speculate into gaps, overlaps and contradictions in Ironside’s archive.
Sue Williams is the best-selling author of the historical novel, Elizabeth & Elizabeth, also set in early colonial Australia, and is an award-winning journalist, travel writer and non-fiction author. She has developed a writing style that tells a story as evocatively as possible, with a keen eye for detail. Sue's biographies include Under Her Skin: The life and work of Professor Fiona Wood; Mean Streets, Kind Heart: The Father Chris Riley story; Father Bob: The larrikin priest; The Last Showman: Fred Brophy; No Time For Fear: Paul de Gelder; Peter Ryan: The inside story; Death of a Doctor; and The Girl Who Climbed Everest. Other books are about travel, true crime and genetics, while she has also had a children's book published in the US.