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Overview
Born in the Manawatū in 1891, Helen Crabb took art and sculpture evening classes in Palmerston North, before moving to Sydney in 1913 to study at Julian Ashton’s art school. Crabb spent most of the next 30 years living in Sydney and the UK, first as a student, then as an art teacher. She returned to Wellington in 1943, where she set up an art school at her studio on Hobson Street.
In Wellington, Crabb took on the professional name ‘Barc’. She held salons and sketching sessions, and exhibited regularly with other local artists like Helen Stewart, Evelyn Page and T.A. McCormack. Crabb taught mostly women, her students included Helen Stewart, Avis Higgs, Joan Fanning and Patricia Fry.
Although Crabb began as a painter, by the time she moved to Wellington she was working almost exclusively in pen and ink. She believed firmly in the importance of drawing as a basis for any artistic practice and encouraged her students to spend as much time as possible sketching.
This work is typical of Crabb’s practice – she mostly drew candid views of friends and family at home, or impressions of people seen around the city.