Hahndorf artist Nora Heysen was the first woman to win the Archibald Prize, and Australia's first female painter to be appointed as an official war artist. A portraitist and a flower painter, Nora Heysen's life was defined by an all-consuming drive to draw and paint. In 1989, aged 78, Nora re-emerged on the Australian art scene when the nation's major art institutions restored her position after years of artistic obscurity. Extensively researched, and containing artworks and photographs from the painter's life, this is the first biography of the artist, and it has been enthusiastically embraced by the Heysen family. This authorized biography coincides with a major retrospective of the works of Nora and her father, landscape painter Hans Heysen, to be held at the National Gallery of Victoria in March 2019.

Considered one of Australia's greatest landscape painters, Hans Heysen reached critical acclaim—as well as knighthood—during his lifetime for his art, particularly his expressive watercolor paintings. This collection discusses the progress of his career as seen through his watercolors as well as the technique he employed in the paintings. A brief biography is also included.

This book celebrates the work of Hans Heysen and is timed to mark the fortieth anniversary of the artist's death. Enormously popular, Heysen is South Australia's best-known artist. He is also recognized across the country as one of the most influential of Australian artists, one whose work was pivotal to development of Australian art and culture in the twentieth century. In addition to his will-known landscapes, the book reappraises his lesser-known work, tracing its development from his early student days painting in Europe between 1899 and 1903. Heysen was the first artist to use eucalyptus as a persistent motif in his art, celebrating the grandeur of certain species and presenting them as symbols of heroic endurance and includes many other subject areas, such as toilers of the land, quarries, the River Murray, the South Coast and Pewsey Vale, and also portraits and still-lifes.