The National Art School, where Margaret Olley studied, hosts a retrospective of the much-loved artist's work. (Supplied: NAS/Hamish McIntosh)
In 1945, Margaret Olley — one of Australia's most celebrated painters — graduated from the National Art School, then known as East Sydney Technical College, with first-class honours.
Within two years the Lismore-born artist would win the first-ever Mosman Art Prize and join Sydney's post-war art scene, alongside artists like William Dobell, Sidney Nolan and Donald Friend.
During her life she would hold more than 90 solo exhibitions; influence artists like Cressida Campbell and Ben Quilty; establish a trust to buy paintings for public galleries; and be painted for an Archibald Prize-winning portrait not once, but twice.
Olley — who donated $30-40 million worth of her art to public galleries — pictured in her studio in 2005. (Getty Images: Patrick Riviere)
Now, she's being celebrated with a retrospective at her alma mater, titled Australia Intimiste. The intimism of the title refers to the late 19th-century art movement where artists like Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard painted intimate, domestic scenes from which Olley gathered much inspiration.
"She loved this place," curator Katrina Cashman says of the National Art School, where Olley began her career.
"She spent her whole life working towards the pursuit of beauty.
"She worked very diligently and worked very hard to maintain [her success]. She had her ups and downs. She had various health struggles over the years. She suffered from depression at times.
"But she was relentless in that pursuit of her primary passion: beauty."
Olley painted Portrait in the mirror in 1948 when she was just 25, living on Sydney's Lower North Shore with her friend and fellow artist Margaret Cilento.
Cashman says Portrait in the mirror shows Olley's "developing awareness of colour". (Supplied: AGNSW)
Cashman describes it as a turning point in Olley's career: "She's really establishing herself. She's recognising that she needs a space away from the National Art School to create her own work."
While she had graduated three years earlier, Olley was still a regular on campus, attending evening classes until the year she painted Portrait in the mirror.
That same year, Olley held her first solo exhibition, in Sydney, where both the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the National Gallery of Victoria purchased works.