Notes

Estelle Mary (Jo) Sweatman was an Australian painter born in South Yarra, Victoria, in 1872. She studied at Melbourne’s National Gallery School under artists Frederick McCubbin and Bernard Hall between 1890 and 1898. Sweatman began her career focusing on portraiture but later turned to landscape painting, especially of the Warrandyte region of Victoria. She became known as one of the country’s foremost painters of wattle.

Sweatman exhibited with and was a member of the Victorian Artists Society from 1901 to 1917. In 1918, she became a founding member of the breakaway group Twenty Melbourne Painters Society. Additionally, she exhibited with the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors and helped to develop the Warrandyte artistic community. Sweatman was a finalist for the prestigious Archibald Prize in 1922.