Nora Heysen was an Australian artist, the first woman to win the prestigious Archibald Prize* in 1938 for portraiture and the first Australian woman appointed as an official war artist.

Heysen was born in Hahndorf, the fourth child of South Australian landscape painter Sir Hans Heysen. She was raised at The Cedars in Hahndorf in the Adelaide Hills. She studied art from 1926 to 1930, at the School of Fine Arts in Adelaide, under F. Millward Grey and sold paintings to the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Art Gallery of South Australia in 1930. From 1930 to 1933, she continued to study two days a week at the School, and worked in her own studio the rest of the time. In 1931 she visited Sydney with her parents, and spent two weeks ...