Remembering Lola McCausland
Lola McCausland was invited to become a member of the Zonta Club of Brisbane shortly after it was established in 1971 and became instrumental in many of the Club’s early fundraising art shows.
As a well-known portrait artist in Australia and internationally, Lola was commissioned by fellow Zontian, Dr Joan Godfrey OBE, to create a pastel portrait of the Club’s inaugural President, Babette Stephens OBE, to mark the 10th anniversary of the Club’s charter. The portrait is displayed each year at the presentation ceremony for the Babette Stephens Memorial Award, a prize created by the Club for a second-year female acting student in the Creative Industries Faculty of the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in recognition of Babette’s seminal role in the performing arts in Queensland. The original of the portrait is now held in perpetuity by QUT and a copy is held in the archival collection of La Boite, the Brisbane theatre company which Babette was instrumental in establishing.
Lola was born in Brisbane on 7 December 1922, and demonstrated a talent for drawing while a student at St Margaret’s Anglican Girls School in Brisbane from 1936 to 1938 and at The Glennie Memorial School in Toowoomba where she was a boarder in 1939. The art collection at Glennie includes two of Lola’s works — a portrait of Dame Annabelle Rankin (a fellow Old Girl of the school) and a flower study of Banksia collina. The collection of The Women’s College within The University of Queensland also includes a McCausland portrait of Dame Annabelle – an honorary member of the Zonta Club of Brisbane.
Lola’s early employment was in the art department of The Courier-Mail and her first professional and technical training was through three years with Brisbane artist, Caroline Barker. Her early focus was on pastel and watercolour studies of nudes and ballet dancers, frequently sketched at ballet schools and backstage during performances, but an interest in portraiture soon emerged.
Lola McCausland with her mother in Sydney (1940).
In the early 1950s, Lola exhibited in Toowoomba, Brisbane and Sydney before travelling to the UK in April 1953, accompanied by her mother, Mrs L.J. McCausland, to develop her skills in portraiture. In London, she studied at the Chelsea School of Art (now the Chelsea College of Arts) and shared a studio and took private lessons with Philip Lambe, a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.
En route to London aboard the Orcades, she had sketched members of the Australian cricket team, including Arthur Morris, Keith Miller, and Don Tallon as well as other passengers, and during her 18 months in London, she secured 10 portrait commissions and sold some 50 ballet pictures.
Several of the London commissions were from wealthy American girls visiting the UK for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, but critically for the development of her career, Lola was commissioned to paint the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Lord Brookeborough.
Her reputation established, she returned to Brisbane in December 1954 and during the next decade became one of the most in-demand and prolific portraitists in Australia.
In 1966, she accepted an invitation to return to London to participate in a group exhibition in Chelsea, taking the opportunity to study with miniature portrait painter, Stella Marks, best known for her miniatures of the Royal Family. En route back to Australia, Lola spent three months in the USA where she completed 11 portraits.
In her very productive career, Lola estimated that she completed more than a hundred paintings for clients in the USA as well as countless portraits for Australian clients, many of them of children, based on photographs. She was also commissioned to paint portraits of many prominent Australians including Dame Annabelle Rankin, Sir John Lavarack (former Governor of Queensland), the eminent geologist Professor Dorothy Hill, and Julius Kruttschnitt (Chairman of Mount Isa Mines) as well as four other men associated with the establishment and growth of Mount Isa.
Lola McCausland with her mother in Sydney (1940).
Other commissions included the designs for the Stations of the Cross in St Mary's Star of the Sea Cathedral in Darwin, opened in 1962. Lola’s designs were transformed into mosaics in Spilimbergo, the Italian centre famed for its mosaic school and artisans.
Lola also produced many flower studies, including the Banksia collina study mentioned earlier. The painting had been presented to Dame Annabelle by the National Council of Women in 1971 when she was appointed as Australia’s High Commissioner to New Zealand, and was later gifted to the School by Dame Annabelle.
Lola died in Brisbane on 7 April 2015 at Carinity Aged Care, Wishart.