Marie Anne Tuck, was an artist and art educator in South Australia.
History
Marie Tuck was born at Mount Torrens, South Australia, one of eight children of Edward Starkey Tuck and his wife Amy Harriet Tuck, née Tayler, on 5 September 1866, though she later claimed 1872 as her birth year. Her father was a schoolteacher at Mount Torrens. From 1886 she received arts training at night classes with James Ashton at his Norwood studio, then in the late 1880s at his Adelaide Academy of Arts, working at a Paynehamplant nursery and assisting Ashton as a way of paying for her tuition while saving for her big ambition – to study in Paris. She was an early member of the Adelaide Easel Club, In 1896 she moved to Perth, Western Australia, where she gave private tuition and worked at a photographer's studio, perhaps as a photo colorist. It took ten years, but in 1906, by then Principal of the Perth Art School, she sailed by the Runic to Paris, and there studied under expatriate Australian Rupert Bunny, developing a great love of French people and culture. She exhibited at the "Old Salon", receiving an honorable mention for her painting Toilette for the Bride. She returned to Australia in 1914, departing from Liverpool on 27 June on the 'Medic' a White Star line Steamship, bound for the Cape and Australia. On 3 August Germany declared war on her beloved France. Arriving back in Adelaide on 7 August 1914, she declared that if she had known about the outbreak of war, she would have stayed in France. After her 1914 arrival back in South Australia, she exhibited in Adelaide and rejoined the local artistic community. She started teaching at the South Australian School of Arts and Crafts. She held many exhibitions of her own work in Adelaide; impressionistic landscapes, figures and portraits in oils. Her many students included Ivor Hele, Dora Cecil Chapman and Noel Wood. She never married; her last address was Jane Street, Frewville, where she had her studio in the front room. Ruth Tuck, water colorist and art teacher who married fellow-painter Mervyn Ashmore Smith OAM, and who founded her own art school in Burnside in 1955, was a first cousin, once removed, although the relationship was more like aunt and niece.
