20 Facts About Charles Conder

Charles Edward Conder was an English-born painter, lithographer and designer.

Charles Conder emigrated to Australia and was a key figure in the Heidelberg School, arguably the beginning of a distinctively Australian tradition in Western art.

Charles Conder spent several years as a young child in India until the death of his mother on 14 May 1873 in Bombay, when Charles was four; he was then sent back to England and attended a number of schools including a boarding school at Eastbourne, which he attended from 1877.

Charles Conder left school at 15, and his very religious, non-artistic father, against Charles's natural artistic inclinations, decided that he should follow in his footsteps as a civil engineer.

Charles Conder joined the Art Society of New South Wales, attended the painting classes of Alfred James Daplyn, and went on plein air painting excursions with Julian Ashton.

In Sydney in 1888, Charles Conder met and painted with plein airist Tom Roberts, then visiting from Melbourne.

Later that year, Charles Conder moved to Melbourne to join Roberts and his circle of friends, including painter Arthur Streeton.

Charles Conder contributed 46 "impressions" to the show and designed the Symbolist and Art Nouveau-inspired catalogue.

Charles Conder was a fun-loving man who painted with an often humorous touch.

Charles Conder left Australia in 1890, and spent the rest of his life in Europe, at first in Britain, then France for extended periods.

Charles Conder moved to Paris and studied at the Academie Julian, where he befriended several avant-garde artists, including Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who painted his portrait and featured him in at least two of his Moulin Rouge works.

Charles Conder became linked to the aesthetic movement, mixing with the likes of Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley.

In 1895, Charles Conder designed a room within the art gallery Maison de l'Art Nouveau, which opened that year in Paris.

Charles Conder made a specialty of painting on silk, relatively easy on silk fans, but he excelled on one occasion when he painted a series of white silk gowns worn by Alexandra Thaulow, wife of Norwegian painter Frits Thaulow, while she stood on a table, the gowns becoming "coloured like a field of flowers".

In Dieppe, Charles Conder met Aubrey Beardsley, but they did not like each other.

Charles Conder continued to paint, but his output was severely affected by the continual poor health, including paralysis and a bout of delirium tremens.

Charles Conder married a wealthy widow, Stella Maris Belford at The British Embassy Paris on 5 December 1901, giving him financial security.

Charles Conder spent the last year of his life in a sanatorium, and died in Holloway Sanatorium of "general paresis of the insane", in modern terms tertiary syphilis.

In death, Charles Conder's work was rated highly by many notable artists, such as Pissarro and Degas.

The Canberra suburb of Charles Conder, established in 1991, was named after him.