Many of Hilda’s works were sold and the success of the exhibition led to many of her Australian works of art touring London and British regional art galleries. The most prestigious of these being at the Royal Academy in London and at the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers,
A solo exhibition of her work was on view in December 1924 at the Beaux Arts Gallery, London, and one of the works on display was His Land, which was described as having “the rare quality of conveying the spirit of life in the Commonwealth. Back in Australia, the December 5th 1925 edition of the Newcastle Morning Herald printed an article about the painting and the exhibition:
AUSTRALIAN WOMAN ARTIST.
Something of the beauty and grandeur of life in Australia is to be found in the art exhibition opened at the Beaux Arts Gallery, Bruton-place, by the Australian High Commissioner. The artist. Mrs.Hilda RIx Nicholas, is an Australian and her works possess the rare quality of conveying, the spirit of life in the Commonwealth as well as portraying) that life pictorially. “His Land.” The most important work of the exhibition. might almost be termed great. It is a perfect example of the difficult art oil figure and’ landscape combination. In the foreground ‘is a young settler on horseback; contemplating a vast sunlit valley, which stretches away to the distant Blue Mountains. A. J. Munnings himself could not have painted horse and rider better. The trees, fields, and mountains are brightly coloured, and the whole picture. seems.to convey, the sunny heat-laden atmosphere of Australia.
It was not just in English galleries that her work was exhibited, for in Paris, she appeared at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts Spring exhibition in Paris, in which she had eight works, a very large number for a single artist. The Société not only hung many of her paintings and drawings, she was elected an Associate to the organisation in that year.
One of her most famous paintings was completed in 1925 whilst she was living in Paris. It was entitled Les fleurs dédaignées (The scorned flowers). It was a monumental painting, the largest of all her works, measuring 193.0 x 128.5 cm (76 x 51 inches). Rix Nicholas concentrated on details of costume and decoration. The ornate eighteenth-century-style floral dress we see on the model was created by the artist specifically for the painting. The female stands indoors before an early twentieth-century pastiche of a seventeenth-century Flemish tapestry, which was once owned by the artist. So, what is going on in the depiction we see before us? Look at the female. Her pale skin appears smooth and without blemish, almost like a porcelain doll. Her head looks so small in relation to her voluminous dress. The model for this work was a Parisian professional model and a prostitute, apparently with a reputation for being moody and cantankerous and this comes across as we study her face. She stands upright in a dignified but arrogant manner. She pouts. What is she thinking? Look at her facial expression, is it an expression of contempt or maybe sullenness? On the floor at her feet, we can see a bouquet of flowers which she has discarded and which are mirrored in the pattern of her dress. What was the artist’s reason for that? Are they from her lover who she has now rejected? Look at her gaze. Who is she looking at out the corner of her eyes? So many unanswered questions. Many art historians have had their say but few agree and so it is up to you to come up with answers!
When the work was displayed in Sydney in 1927, the art correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald of June 27th wrote:
“…For combination of grace, dramatic strength, and clearness in technique this picture would be difficult to surpass. There is nothing finicky about it; it tells its story with vivid directness. As a background to the figure Mrs. Rix Nicholas has set a piece of antique tapestry, so that the trees on either side lean in arch-wise over the head, the face and shoulders stand out clearly against an expanse of sky, and behind the body and limbs extends a countryside full of towers and rivers and trees. The quaint conventionality of this background accords exactly with the late eighteenth-century costume, all sprigged with roses and heliotrope; and the whole mass of detail harmonies [sic] perfectly with the type of the model’s face. It is a cold, selfish face. The artist has brought out with revealing strokes an expression of vindictive malice which is for the moment resting there; and the hands, the fingers of one grasped tightly by the other, give a clear indication of nervous tension within. The treatment of flesh tones and the general arrangement [sic], drawing attention gently but not too obtrusively to the columbines scattered on the polished floor—those are excellent…”
The painting was purchased by the National Gallery of Australia in 2008 from the artist’s son, Rix Wright.
During her period in France Hilda put together a number of new paintings including portraits of traditional life and costume, whilst she spent her summers in Brittany. Before she left Europe, she had Le Bigouden, a painting she completed in 1925, hung at the Royal Academy’s 1926 Summer Exhibition. Le Bigouden and La Bigoudène were the names given to men and women who inhabited the Pont-l’Abbé region of Brittany
At the end of 1926, Hilda Rix Nicholas and Dorothy Richmond returned together to Australia. They decided to continue with their painting adventures and bought a car, modified it to hold all their painting paraphernalia and set off to roam New South Wales and Queensland and paint the Australian landscape from Canberra and the Monaro plains to the south, up into central Queensland . Hilda returned to Delegate where she had spent time before setting sail to Europe. Once again, she met up with farmers, Neil, and Edgar Wright. For Hilda it was a welcome return to the man she loved and On June 2nd 1928 she and Edgar Wright married in Melbourne. In 1930, Hilda and her husband had their only child, a son, whom they named Rix. Hilda stopped painting during their son’s infancy but once he became a young boy, she resumed with her art. Coincidentally, her friend and travel companion, Dorothy Richmond, married Edgar Wright’s cousin, Walter, and settled in the same region.
Hilda and Edgar Wright went to live in a property called Knockalong in the Tombong valley which was situated close to Delegate. It was a large and successful pastoral station, run by Edgar and his station hands and he is represented as the Shepherd of Knockalong in Hilda’s 1933 painting. The painting, which is one of the first works that Hilda Rix Nicholas produced, following her return to painting in 1934, after the birth of her only child, was one of many which depicted the life on the land in the Monaro of New South Wales, which is one of the centres of Australia’s rich and productive farmland.
Their son, Rix attended boarding school at Tudor House and then at Geelong Grammar. It was whilst attending the grammar school that he fell in love with sculpting. in fact, he created the two gateway sculptures that still adorn the entrance today. There was a differing of opinion between mother and father as to what their son’s future path should be. His father wanted him to take over the Merino stud and his mother wanted him to pursue an art career. In the end, to keep both happy, he combined his love for the southern Monaro landscape and his sculpting He managed the property and when he had free time, he created his sculpted works of art.
Rix created The Shearer when he was just 19 years old. Cast in bronze, The Shearer bends at the hip over a held sheep, its fleece almost entirely removed and laying at its feet.
Hilda carried on producing works of art for the next twenty-five years and had them shown at numerous exhibitions but by the time of her last exhibition, her love of painting was diminishing and the thoughts of what she had achieved and what was her future began to depress her. In a letter to her son she talked of that depression, writing:
“…Not doing anything creative is nearly killing me. The trouble is that there is no one near me who cares whether I ever do any more work or not … I feel the artist in me is dying and the dying is an agony … only one’s self knows the craving and the best part in one is aching unsatisfied…”
At this juncture in her life, with her health deteriorating, and her fervour for art fading, she did exhibit for the final time in 1954 in Sydney. It was a group exhibition with two of her oil paintings shown alongside her son’s sculpture The Shearer also on display.
Hilda Rix Nicholas Wright died in Delegate on 3 August 1961, a month before her seventy-seventh birthday.