Agnes Noyes Goodsir (1864–1939) was an Australian painter who lived in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. Like many artists, writers, and other creative people around the world, Goodsir found Paris more liberal, offering more freedom from restrictive social norms in their home countries.
Goodsir was known for her portrait paintings, particularly of women, often from among the lesbian circles in Paris at the time. Her paintings are rich with luminous color, featuring strong compositions using shadow and light. She depicted the women in her paintings as independent and confident. Goodsir’s most well-known portrait is that of her partner, Rachel Dunn, an American expatriate. Entitled The Parisienne (c. 1924), the painting depicts Dunn “as a ‘new woman’, and independent being with cloche hat, bobbed hair, tailored blouse and a cigarette dangling from one elegantly manicured hand – all signifiers that made Dunn legible as a lesbian to the circles with which she travelled.” (pp.75) The second image is another of Goodsir’s portraits of Rachel Dunn, sitting comfortably in a café with a cigarette.
Image1: Agness Goodsir The Parisienne, c. 1924 Oil on canvas, 61 x 50cm
Image 2: Girl with Cigarette, c1925 Oil on canvas, 100 x 81 cm
Art and queer culture Lord, Catherine, 1949- London : Phaidon, 2013. 412 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 30 cm. English HOLLIS number: 990136652890203941
