Joyce McGrath, who painted the iconic portrait of PGH, has died just short of her 100th birthday. A well-known librarian at the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne, McGrath presided over the Arts library for many years and was responsible for persuading Glanville-Hicks to donate many of her papers (but not all) to the library’s collection. McGrath visited Glanville-Hicks in Greece in 1966 as part of a European trip funded by a Churchill Fellowship, her “first exciting adventure”. She was forty, thirteen years younger than Peggy, always simply and beautifully dressed, her long brown hair coiled up in a bun, and she had a limp, the legacy of childhood tuberculosis. Not knowing where Peggy lived she went to the flea market in Athens looking for icons and while in the shop a letter with Peggy’s name on it fell out of her bag and the lady serving her offered to take her to Peggy’s home. Of course Peggy told her they were fated to meet. As Peggy had a meeting Joyce returned in the evening with a tape recorder and Peggy gave her copies of her scores. At the time she told Joyce she had two monographs in preparation, one on criticism and one on the materials of music. Joyce was struck by the tastefulness of the house, which was “charming and full of beautiful art objects, pieces of ancient Greek sculpture, vases, an incon . . . and several big interesting [paintings] by her husband [Stanley Bate]”. There was furniture that had belonged to her mother, some Indian and Persian carpets and prints, musical instruments, a Byzantine icon, owls and cages holding budgerigars. Joyce admired Bate’s paintings and she was to paint a portrait of him from a photo, but sadly she sold that around 2000 and it has been lost. Peggy gave her two handmade items of clothing, one of them the cape with a cowl hood that she wore to the premiere of The Transposed Heads, which Joyce intended to give to a museum.

Joyce and Peggy were to meet on several adventures in Australia, including a trip from Melbourne to Wagga, where they found the grave of Peggy’s brother Garth. Joyce had an enormous circle of artist friends in Melbourne and she bequeathed paintings by Max Meldrum, Archie and Amalie Colquhoun to the Mildura Art Centre. Her letters to Glanville-Hicks are now in State Library Victoria in the Peggy Glanville-Hicks collection. See the library’s obituary here.

A book about Joyce’s childhood experience of tuberculosis of the hip and the surgeon who treated her was published in 2007 Plaster and Paint: John Colquhoun, Orthopaedic Surgeon and His Patient, Joyce McGrath, Portrait Painter by Jan Harper. Joyce’s portraits are reproduced there, as well as in the recent history of the Lyceum Club in Melbourne, Circles of Friendship: A Centenary History of the Lyceum Club, Melbourne by Janette Bomford.