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warp: cotton No.12 seinetwine; weft: wool and cotton (overall: 144.8 cm x 120.4 cm)
Dame Elisabeth Murdoch AC DBE (1909–2012), philanthropist, was the widow of Sir Keith Murdoch and mother of the publisher, Rupert Murdoch. Over her life Dame Elisabeth contributed unstintingly to Australian artistic, cultural, educational, medical, environmental and community causes, particularly in her home state of Victoria. She endowed the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, the Dame Elisabeth Murdoch Sculpture Foundation, the Dame Elisabeth Murdoch Arboretum, and the Australian Ballet. Dame Elisabeth served on committees and boards of many public institutions including the Royal Children's Hospital, the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition, and the National Gallery of Victoria. She provided scholarships for research into childhood deafness, funded digitisation projects and supported programs to help troubled and ill youth. In 2003 she received the Great Australian Philanthropy Award and in 2005 – at the age of 96 – she was named Victorian of the Year. Dame Elisabeth died at her home Cruden Farm near Langwarrin, Victoria at the age of 103.
Dame Elisabeth was a founding member of the Victorian Tapestry Workshop's Board of Management (now the Australian Tapestry Workshop). Its founding director, Sue Walker, recalls that Murdoch took great interest in the process of her own portrait, enquiring into each of the weavers and 'exhibiting her famous exuberant excitement at the completion of weaving'. The image is appropriately set in Dame Elisabeth's lovingly tended garden at Cruden Farm.
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This is a delicate mixed media portrait of philanthropist and founding patron of the Victorian Tapestry Workshop, Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, created in 2000 by the now-named Australian Tapestry Workshop. It measures approximately 145 centimetres by 125 centimetres. The image was composed by painter Christopher Pyett, adapted on computer by printmaker Normana Wight and woven on the loom by Merrill Dumbrell.
It is displayed hanging between a white backing board and clear Perspex cover.
Elisabeth is shown from the chest up, her body angled slightly to the right and facing front on. Behind her, the lush greenery of her garden at Cruden Farm, Langwarrin. Wool and cotton woven threads create a textured surface. Different colour threads in the weft are bundled together to produce a flecked effect, enhancing the texture and blending a palette of creams, pinks and greens together across the surface of the work.
Garden foliage fills the background in a simplified and abstracted design. At the top, deep olive-green tones give a sense of depth, transitioning downwards to a range of bright and dark greens and yellows marking abstracted leaves, branches, and shrubbery, and creams and soft pinks creating blossoms.
Elisabeth is positioned against this garden backdrop, seen from the chest up, facing forward while leaning back and towards the left.
Her warm creamy skin has sparse amounts of purples, pinks, and yellow-green threads interwoven, introducing colours used in the background and clothing. Her white hair is pulled back from her face in a loose fashion, tied at the nape of her neck, tendrils escaping. Her forehead is gently furrowed above white framed glasses. Elisabeth gazes outwards with violet eyes lined with gentle wrinkles and hooded eyelids. Her closed blush pink lips are relaxed and have deep crevices on either side above a soft chin. Her neck emerges from a collared blouse woven in an intricate floral pattern of pinks, purples, charcoal grey, white and cream.
Her left hand is pulled up to gently rest upon her upper chest. Elisabeth’s fingers are slightly splayed, swollen at the joints, showing signs of age and arthritis, revealing a wedding band and a plain faced silver wristwatch.
Audio Description written by Alana Sivell and read by Amy Middleby
