Florence Ada Fuller Australia, c1867-1946

Florence Ada Fuller was a South African born Australian artist. Originally from Port Elizabeth, Fuller migrated as a child to Melbourne with her family. There she trained with her uncle Robert Hawker Dowling and teacher Jane Sutherland and took classes at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School, becoming a professional artist in the late 1880s. In 1892 she left Australia, travelling first to South Africa, where she met and painted for Cecil Rhodes, and then on to Europe. She lived and studied there for the subsequent decade, except for a return to South Africa in 1899 to paint a portrait of Rhodes. Between 1895 and 1904 her works were exhibited at the Paris Salon and London's Royal Academy. In 1904, Fuller returned to Australia, living in Perth, where she painted some of her best-known work. Beginning in 1908, Fuller travelled extensively, living in India and England before ultimately settling in Sydney. There, she was the inaugural teacher of life drawing at the School of Fine and Applied Arts, established in 1920 by the New South Wales Society of Women Painters.

In our database, 36 works by Florence Fuller are listed as being offered for sale, the earliest in 1975, of which 28 (78%) were sold. The highest price recorded for the artist is $280,600 for Weary 1888 sold by Sotheby's in April 2015. No works have been offered for sale this year, and the last sale we have recorded for the artist was in 2023. Works by Florence Fuller are held by the Art Gallery of Western Australia, National Gallery of Victoria and a further four major public national galleries (see list below).