Theobald on Miss Brotherton

Local historian Marjorie Theobald reflects on the life of the remarkable Miss Brotherton, one of a small group of local women who imagined and then worked towards establishing an art gallery and museum for Castlemaine.

Winnie Brotherton (standing, far right) with the Committee of the Castlemaine Progress Association, who organised the Castlemaine Past and Present exhibition, and helped establish the Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum. Castlemaine Art Museum

Anna Mary Winnifred Brotherton (“Winnie” to her close friends) was born in Castlemaine in 1875 to Henry and Jane (née Grocott) Brotherton. She was a founding member of the art gallery and intimately involved in all aspects of its administration until her death in 1956.

Letter from Mrs M Wooley to Mr B Clarke, 23 May 1936. Castlemaine Art Museum.

In 1913 a small group of women—among them Miss Brotherton, Mary Brough Woolley, the artists Alice Newell and Elsie Barlow, and Mrs Bertha Leviny and her daughters—established the gallery in a room lent by Mrs Leviny, probably on the corner of Barker and Lyttleton Streets where the bank now stands. Following a public meeting at the Castlemaine Town Hall in the same year, men became the public face of the movement as was customary in those days, but the gallery as we know it today would never have existed without the determination and hard work of the women.

When the Herald sent its cartoonist SG Wells to capture the opening of the new gallery in 1931, he sketched about twenty men and one woman, Miss Brotherton, though she is included as the Commissioner of Girl Guides rather than as a founder of the gallery.

SG Wells (1885–1972) *Castlemaine Stalwarts* 1931, pen and ink drawing. Castlemaine Art Museum. Gift of John E Leckie. Copyright Estate of the artist.

When her parents died, Miss Brotherton inherited the family home, “Woodlands”, in the haute bourgeois precinct of Burnett Road north of the Botanical Gardens. She evidently inherited sufficient wealth to remain single and live a life of leisure, if not of idleness. In the 1920s she and her niece Nan Cherry (a Bachelor of Arts and a qualified teacher) ran a boarding school for children of special needs, described in an extensive prospectus as run on rural, family and one-on-one principles. The school closed when, in a shocking accident, one of the pupils burned to death. No coroner’s inquest has come to light, but Miss Brotherton closed the house with all its furnishing and move to “Avonsleigh” across Barkers Creek on the Midland Highway, where she remained until her death.

In the last decade of her life, Miss Brotherton fought one last battle—to save the Market building in Mostyn Street from demolition. The affair began in 1946 when the State Electricity Commission made a successful offer to the council to buy the market building site for its central Victorian headquarters, the mayor describing the market as ‘an architectural monstrosity’ worthy only of demolition. Miss Brotherton orchestrated the campaign in Castlemaine, while her close friend, artist AME (Alice) Bale, took the cause to a wider audience in Melbourne. In 1952 a referendum was held, in which a majority of ratepayers voted to save the market, though Miss Brotherton did not live to see the restoration of the building by the National Trust, the State Government and the people of Castlemaine.

Winnie Brotherton was a true eccentric. Those of us who were children in the 1950s remember her gaunt upright figure, dressed in a man’s gabardine coat and a man’s hat, walking along the road from the town centre to her home in Burnett Road. As girl guides, we had to visit her at home to be examined for various badges, and witnessed at first hand the glorious disarray into which “Avonsleigh” had fallen. But still there was her cultured voice, her presence and the dignity that comes with a life well lived in the way of her own choosing.

Marjorie Theobald
September 2020

n 1913 a small group of women—among them Miss Brotherton, Mary Brough Woolley, the artists Alice Newell and Elsie Barlow, and Mrs Bertha Leviny and her daughters—established the gallery in a room lent by Mrs Leviny, probably on the corner of Barker and Lyttleton Streets where the bank now stands. Following a public meeting at the Castlemaine Town Hall in the same year, men became the public face of the movement as was customary in those days, but the gallery as we know it today would never have existed without the determination and hard work of the women. When the Herald sent its cartoonist SG Wells to capture the opening of the new gallery in 1931, he sketched about twenty men and one woman, Miss Brotherton, though she is included as the Commissioner of Girl Guides rather than as a founder of the gallery.

ocal historian Marjorie Theobald reflects on the life of the remarkable Miss Brotherton, one of a small group of local women who imagined and then worked towards establishing an art gallery and museum for Castlemaine.

Theobald on Miss BrothertonAnna Mary Winnifred Brotherton (“Winnie” to her close friends) was born in Castlemaine in 1875 to Henry and Jane (née Grocott) Brotherton. She was a founding member of the art gallery and intimately involved in all aspects of its administration until her death in 1956.

Marjorie Theobald

Professor Marjorie Theobald (née Madigan) is descended from several families who came to the gold rushes and stayed to make a home. She inherited a love of goldfields history from her father who was still sluicing for gold in the 1930s and 40s. She left Castlemaine in 1959 to attend the University of Melbourne, graduating in Arts and Diploma of Education, which qualified her to be a secondary teacher. She completed her PhD at Monash University and joined the staff of the University of Melbourne as a historian in 1988. In 2002 Marjorie and her husband John returned to Castlemaine, where she shifted her focus to the history of the goldfields and the town. She has since written a history of her family and a history of Castlemaine’s first decade.

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