Personal Life

Margaret Hannah Olley was born on 24 June 1923 in Lismore, New South Wales. After spending some of her childhood in remote Upper Tully, south of Cairns, Queensland, the family moved to Lower Tully where her sister Elaine and brother Ken were subsequently born.

 

 

Experiences like riding a pony to school helped foster an early sense of adventure and independence in the young artist. However, it was not until she attended Somerville House¹², a Brisbane girl's boarding school, in 1935 that her talent for painting and drawing started receiving encouragement.
Olley's art teacher at Somerville House persuaded Olley's parents to send Margaret to art school. In 1941, she started at Brisbane Central Technical College.

The next year Olley moved to Sydney and enrolled at East Sydney Technical College, where her boarding school friend and fellow artist Margaret Cilento also attended. Olley graduated in 1945 with A-class honours.

Exhibitions and Famous drawings

Margaret Olley has held at least one exhibition per year since 1948 at galleries including:

• Macquarie and Holdsworth Galleries, Sydney
• Philip Bacon Gallery¹⁷, Brisbane
• Greenhill Galleries¹⁸, Adelaide
• Australian Galleries¹⁹, Melbourne and Sydney
• Solander Gallery²⁰, Canberra

Olley Subject of Ben Quilty

Olley was twice the subject of an Archibald Prize winning painting; the first by William Dobell in 1948 and the other by Ben Quilty in 2011.

A multiple finalist, Ben Quilty won the Archibald Prize in 2011 for his portrait of Australian artist Margaret Olley.^[3] It was his seventh entry to the prize.^[4]