Miles Evergood, (Fruit Study), 1933. Watercolour on paper, 28.4 x 19cm. Courtesy: the artist and Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne.

Born in 1871 in Carlton, Miles Evergood (born Myer Blashki) grew up in a traditional Jewish migrant family in a rapidly expanding Melbourne. After his studies at the National Gallery School, and exhibiting at the VAS and the RAS in Sydney, he made an unusual move. Whilst virtually all his contemporaries were gravitating to London and Paris in 1898, he moved to San Francisco, and then to New York. He returned to Australia in the 1930s – first to Brisbane, then Sydney, and finally to Kalorama, east of Melbourne, in 1938.  He died unexpectedly in 1939.

Evergood exhibited his work with success in the US and was well connected to the Melbourne scene in the 30s – friends with Rupert Bunny, George Bell, James Quinn, and John Longstaff, among others, all of whom he had met at art school in Melbourne in the 1890s. Castlemaine Gallery held a major retrospective exhibition in 1988.

This exhibition is online only. View the exhibition here.

For further information on the artist, view Charles Nodrum’s introduction to the gallery’s 2015 exhibition of paintings by Miles Evergood here.

The gallery is currently open by appointment only, but physical viewings can be arranged.