Amalie Sara Colquhoun was an Australian landscape and portrait painter who is represented in national and state galleries. In addition to painting landscapes, portraits and still lifes, Colquhoun designed and supervised the construction of stained glass windows for three of Ballarat's churches, St Andrew's Kirk, Lydiard Street Uniting Church and Mount Pleasant Methodist Church. She studied in both Melbourne and Sydney, exhibited in England and Australia and taught in the school she started with her husband in Melbourne.
Biography
She was born Amalie Sara Field in Murtoa, a town in the Wimmera region of Victoria, Australia to parents Alfred Francis Field, a blacksmith, and Louisa Caroline, née Degenhardt, both Australian born. They moved to Ballarat in 1904 where Amalie studied drawing and design at the Ballarat Technical Art School, becoming the Art Mistress there in the mid-1920s. She continued to advance her career when the Victorian Education Department supported her study of pottery and stained glass at Sydney Technical College. On returning to Ballarat she started the teaching of pottery at the school. She continued her studies at the well-known Max Meldrum School in Melbourne. She also taught at Melbourne Technical College. Amalie Field married Archibald Colquhoun in 1931 and they had no children. She died on 16 June 1974 in East Melbourne and was buried in Boroondara cemetery, Kew, with Anglican rites.
Career
In 1927 she was appointed to the Working Men's College in Melbourne. In the same year Archibald Colquhoun started an art school in that city. Amalie Colquhoun was one of Archibald Colquhoun's students and married him in 1931. Up until the time they bought their property at Swinton in Kew, the Colquhouns lived in their Melbourne studios. Colquhoun and her husband taught for many years and had portraits, landscape paintings, and reproductions of famous sculptures displayed on the walls of the school. Colquhoun was noted for her seascapes painted from their holiday house at Lorne, Victoria. Her husband's 1948 painting of her, Amalie Colquhoun, is in the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In 1950 the Colquhouns closed the school, and in 1954 moved from the city to Kew, establishing a studio and occasional gallery in their home. They continued to paint intensively, particularly landscapes and seascapes reflecting their travels.
Honours
In 1949 Colquhoun was a finalist in the Archibald Prize with her work Rosa.
