Louie
Riggall was one of eleven children in the family of Edward and Martha Riggall.
She was
born in Castlemaine, Victoria, on 2nd March, 1868. Her father had
emigrated via Adelaide in 1851 and became a successful storekeeper and
carrier on the Bendigo goldfields.
In
1874 the family moved to Gippsland to lease the 'Glenfalloch' run, an isolated
station of 20,000 acres north of Glenmaggie in the Macalister River valley.
Louie was seventeen in 1885 when her father bought 'Byron Lodge', a property
near Tinamba, and the family moved yet again.
Louie
was encouraged to develop the talent she had shown from an early age for
painting. Her first formal lessons, from A.T. Woodward, commenced
at the Sale School of Mines in 1894 and she followed her teacher when he
became Head of the Art School in Bendigo.
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In 1897 her
father reluctantly allowed Louie to undertake study in Paris at the Atelier
Delecluse where she won two medals in her first year there. She returned
to Australia in 1899 and for the next four years exhibited at the Victorian
Artists' Society alongside such painters as McCubbin, Streeton and Roberts.
In 1905 she again toured Europe. Upon her return she was able to
support herself through sales of her work, especially her portraiture. |
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With
the outbreak of the First World War Louie Riggall joined the Voluntary
Aid Detachments of the Australian Branch of the British Red Cross in Australia.
She served in Australia, Egypt and France. Because of her fluency
in the French language she was placed in charge of the Red Cross store
at the hospital in Rouen, where she died from a cerebral haemorrhage on
31st August 1918. She is buried in that city but there are a number
of memorials to her erected in Maffra.
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