Sold at Auction: Evelyn Pamela Thalben-Ball

Pamela Thalben-Ball, daughter of the artist Evelyn Chapman, studied art at the Heatherley Art School in London from 1946 to 1950. An ‘artist of independent means’, she travelled through Spain and made yearly visits to Italy before visiting Australia for the first time in 1960. The following year, when her mother died, she moved here. She was employed as an artist by Placer International, with cattle properties in Western Australia, and was sent to Papua New Guinea to paint landscape, villages and people there. Since 1977 she has lived on Sydney’s northern beaches. Manly Art Gallery held a retrospective of her work, Pamela Thalben-Ball: A colourful life in 2007. Thalben-Ball’s portrait of solo yachtswoman Kay Cottee was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in 1999. She gave the Gallery Evelyn Chapman’s self-portrait in 2007. Chapman and Thalben-Ball are thus the only mother and daughter artists represented in the collection