The beach, Dee Why, Sydney

This watercolour captures the windy heat of a summer day at Sydney’s Dee Why beach. It’s a very 1920s scene. The beach is busy with swimmers and sunbathers, women wear modern, fitted bathing costumes, and fashionable sun parasols are scattered over the sand.

In 1923, Dee Why was a relatively new beach suburb. From the late 19th century most of the land at Dee Why was owned by the Salvation Army. The church sold it off in the early 1910s, when it was subdivided into suburban sections. At the same time, the Manly tram line was extended out to this new north Sydney suburb, making it an attractive place for holidays and weekends outside the city.

This painting was shown in 1923, in an exhibition mounted by the local Manly newspaper. Sherwood won second prize for the work, which was celebrated by one reviewer as being ‘Full of light, movement and color … [with] an air of spontaneity ….’

Maud Sherwood was born in New Zealand but spent most of her life working in Australia. After training and teaching art at the Wellington Technical College, Sherwood travelled to Europe in 1911. She spent two years painting and studying in France, England, and the Netherlands, before moving to Sydney in 1913. There she met with immediate success – by 1914, one of her paintings had already been bought by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Reference: ‘The Manly pictures. Unique exhibition’, The Daily Telegraph, 22 December 1923, p. 16.