The Daphne Mayo Collection / Home
Purposeful, strong-willed and engergetic - the young Daphne

1895-1919 - Brisbane Years

Born in Sydney to William and Lila Mary Mayo from Surrey and Yorkshire in 1895 (the very year the Queensland National Art Gallery was founded), Daphne Mayo, 1895-1982, was to become an extraordinary and formidable woman of her time.

Mayo was acknowledged not only for her prolific output of monumental commissioned sculptural works and her private commissions, but also for her unprecedented commitment to public art. She also worked with her close personal friend, Vida Lahey, to promote art education for children in Queensland.

Not a great deal is known of Daphne Mayo’s early life in Brisbane. She was reportedly frail and suffered chronic asthma yet the physical demands of her subsequent career would be telling, preparing monumental works as the Brisbane City Hall Tympanum, the Tattersall’s Club frieze, the Queensland Women’s War Memorial in ANZAC Square and her last large public commission of the statue of Sir William Glasgow in her failing years.

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Daphne Mayo and Vida Lahey [c1930s]
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Young Daphne Mayo and unidentified friend

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Young Daphne and unidentified friend, UQFL119_pic009

A closer study of the Mayo collection, particularly the correspondence with her parents, could provide insights into her family life, early values and influences.

She was educated at Brisbane Girls Normal School, and later attended Eton High School, Hamilton, which became St Margarets Clayfield.

Her determination to become a sculptor, though not attributed to her parents, may have been influenced by her home environment:

... a supportive and relatively stimulating home life for a determined individualist ... a close intellectual bond between the young Daphne and her father, a life insurance executive who played the piano, read calculus and philosophy in his spare time and lived close to nature.[2]

In an interview between Mayo and Hazel de Berg (noted Australian oral historian) she recalled, that her father ’drew very well’ amongst his other attributes.[3]
Also, an interview between Lloyd Rees and Judith McKay in 1978 suggests the close bond between father and daughter, referring to her father’s love of nature:

... Excursions down the river helping her father to man his boat were regular events in Daphne Mayo’s childhood.[4]
Family outing on the boat [no date]
UQFL119_pic010		 Group enjoying the river, [no date]
UQFL119_pic011		 In the dinghy [no date]
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zoom Click on individual images to view full sized photographs

Having left school due to her illness, she was educated and influenced by her mother who encouraged drawing. She entered Brisbane Central Technical College in 1911, aged sixteen. Here, she was under the strict tutelage of Godfrey Rivers, 1860-1925, and the keen eye of L.J. Harvey, (1871-1949), instructor in modelling, wood carving and pottery. Both strongly encouraged the determined young student, at a professional as well as personal level, allowing her to use the modelling studio after hours.

A very close relationship also developed between Mayo and Lloyd Rees when he entered the Brisbane Central Technical College in 1912, culminating in a short-lived engagement in the 1920s.

Although other female students attended the College, Daphne Mayo quickly made a strong impact on the dynamics of the classes:

... She was a short elfin-like creature, with a mass of golden locks and luminous blue eyes, and often with a sickly pallor due to her chronic asthma.[5]

Lloyd Rees’ impressions of Daphne Mayo as a young girl were noted by Bessie Palmer in her 1936 article. Lloyd Rees alludes to:

... her intense self discipline and determination to succeed as a sculptor, as if in defiance of her physical frailty.[6]
Lloyd Rees
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Lloyd Rees, as a young man
[no date] UQFL119_pic013
Daphne Mayo participating in Wattle Day celebrations in Brisbane, 1914

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Daphne Mayo participating in Wattle Day celebrations in Brisbane, 1914.
Image courtesy - John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland

Rees recalled in an interview with Judith McKay, he had never met anyone as

... purposeful, strong-willed and energetic ... [7]

Mayo began exhibiting at the Queenland Art Society’s annual exhibitions from 1913 at the age of 18, achieving much acclaim in the local press a year later by winning Queensland’s first subscribed Travelling Art Scholarship to England. This scholarship was established by the Queensland Wattle League, a national patriotic organization founded to support the war effort. This prestigious award allowed Mayo three years study at the Royal Academy Sculpture School, London.

World War I delayed her travelling to England, instead she spent six months at the prestigious Julian Ashton Art School in Sydney, possibly from late 1914 to early 1915.

Returning to Brisbane, she did voluntary work with the Red Cross for the war effort.
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