Leonard Joel’s annual Women Artists auction brings together artists across generations, from important historical figures to some of the most recognised names of the twentieth century. Among the highlights of this year’s auction is Margaret Olley’s Girl Reading (1963), a painting that offers a less familiar view of an artist now so closely associated with still life and the interior.
The early 1960s were an exciting time for Olley. In 1962, she won both the Helena Rubinstein Portrait Prize and the Redcliffe Art Prize, while her exhibition at Brisbane’s Johnstone Gallery sold out. Thirty-eight paintings sold for £3,000, doubling the previous sales record for an Australian woman artist.
Painted the following year, Girl Reading captures its sitter in a quiet moment of absorption. Seated at a table, she leans forward, her gaze directed downwards. Deep green, turquoise and warm orange surround the figure, balanced against the luminous white of her blouse. Lost in her reading and seemingly unaware of the artist before her, she is captured in a fleeting moment of stillness.
It was in Brisbane that Olley began painting Indigenous women from the Joyce Wilding Hostel in South Brisbane, not far from Farndon, her family home. Joyce Wilding arranged for those interested to sit for Olley, and these sittings became the basis for a group of paintings produced during the early 1960s. Olley initially painted nudes, before increasingly placing clothed figures within domestic settings already familiar to her work.
As Olley’s practice developed, still life and the interior increasingly became her focus. Yet many of the qualities for which she became so well known can already be seen in Girl Reading: her confident use of colour, her interest in everyday surroundings and her ability to find something special in the familiar.
More than sixty years later, Girl Reading offers a glimpse into a less familiar side of Olley’s work. Quiet and intimate, it captures an everyday moment with the warmth and sensitivity that remained at the heart of her painting throughout her life.
Girl Reading will be offered in Leonard Joel’s annual Women Artists auction on 14 September 2026.
Hannah Ryan, Senior Art Specialist
Top Images (detail): Margaret Olley (1923-2011) Girl Reading 1963, (also known as “Girl Reading at a Table”) oil on composition board, signed and dated lower right: Olley 63, artist’s name, title and date on gallery label verso, 73 x 59.5cm. Estimate $25,000 – $35,000
September 2026