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Stravinsky's Lunch
A moving, deeply insightful study of two artists-both twentieth-century Australian women-who lived and worked in divergent realms
Drusilla Modjeska's title derives from an anecdote about the composer who, while creating a piece of music, ordered his family to remain silent while taking a meal with him-so Stravinsky could preserve his concentration on his work. Modjeska's book investigates the life patterns of women artists, most of whom have been unable to manage such a neat compartmentalization of daily life and creativity.
Stravinsky's Lunch tells the stories of two extraordinary women, both born close to the turn of the century in Australia and both destined to make important contributions to Australian painting. Stella Bowen went to London to make her career, then became a bohemian and the longtime mistress of Ford Madox Ford. Grace Cossington Smith, a spinster who never strayed far from her childhood home on the outskirts of Sydney, became one of the first Australian modernists. Their distinctive stories speak volumes about how love, art, and life intersect.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Drusilla Modjeska's title derives from an anecdote about the composer who, while creating a piece of music, ordered his family to remain silent while taking a meal with him-so Stravinsky could preserve his concentration on his work. Modjeska's book investigates the life patterns of women artists, most of whom have been unable to manage such a neat compartmentalization of daily life and creativity.
Stravinsky's Lunch tells the stories of two extraordinary women, both born close to the turn of the century in Australia and both destined to make important contributions to Australian painting. Stella Bowen went to London to make her career, then became a bohemian and the longtime mistress of Ford Madox Ford. Grace Cossington Smith, a spinster who never strayed far from her childhood home on the outskirts of Sydney, became one of the first Australian modernists. Their distinctive stories speak volumes about how love, art, and life intersect.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
384 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1999
15 people are currently reading
327 people want to read
About the author
Drusilla Modjeska
26 books49 followersDrusilla Modjeska was born in England and lived in Papua New Guinea before arriving in Australia in 1971. She studied at the Australian National University and the University of New South Wales completing a PhD which was published as Exiles at Home: Australian Women Writers 1925-1945 (1981).
Modjeska's writing often explores the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction. The best known of her work are Poppy (1990), a fictionalised biography of her mother, and Stravinsky's Lunch (2001), a feminist reappraisal of the lives and work of Australian painters Stella Bowen and Grace Cossington Smith. She has also edited several volumes of stories, poems and essays, including the work of Lesbia Harford and a 'Focus on Papua New Guinea' issue for the literary magazine Meanjin.
In 2006 she was a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sydney, "investigating the interplay of race, gender and the arts in post-colonial Papua New Guinea".
Modjeska's writing often explores the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction. The best known of her work are Poppy (1990), a fictionalised biography of her mother, and Stravinsky's Lunch (2001), a feminist reappraisal of the lives and work of Australian painters Stella Bowen and Grace Cossington Smith. She has also edited several volumes of stories, poems and essays, including the work of Lesbia Harford and a 'Focus on Papua New Guinea' issue for the literary magazine Meanjin.
In 2006 she was a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sydney, "investigating the interplay of race, gender and the arts in post-colonial Papua New Guinea".
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
January 30, 2016
This book is about art, culture, feminism, history, female artists and modernism -- mostly set in that turbulent time period between the wars. The author studies two Australian artists in depth -- Stella Bowen and Grace-Cossington-Smith -- whilst touching on many of their contemporaries, both in art and literature.
Modjeska talks about the life and the art, and does so in a way that is sometimes scholarly -- but mostly quite personal. She, the author, is very much a presence in the text -- particularly when she is musing about Cossington-Smith's emotions/motivations/thoughts. Although C-S left a great and comprehensive legacy of art, there is almost nothing in the way of letters or journals or other primary sources. The case of Bowen is quite different as she was a prolific letter writer and journalist -- and was both written about (Ford Madox Ford, Jean Rhys) and left her own memoir (Drawn from Life) as a means of explaining herself. In Bowen's case, though, there is a sense that her artistic output was compromised and limited; that her life could never quite accommodate art to the extent that her talent deserved. Bowen had a child, a difficult partner, moved many times, and had financial problems all of her adult life. Cossington-Smith, on the other hand, had none of these particular worries or claims on her time.
Modejeska has particularly perceptive things to say about Virginia Woolf's experiments in life and art -- and how that impacted her thinking about these two women who were Woolf's exact contemporaries. I was particularly interested in Stella Bowen's story, partly because of the choices she made and partly because I knew a bit about her from her 'role' as Ford Madox Ford's longtime partner and muse. (If you've ever read Parade's End, she was the inspiration for Valentine Wannop.) Bowen and Ford were members of that glorious expat scene in 1920s Paris, and in that sense her story is full of fascination for me. Her 'story' also fits into the To the Lighthouse dichotomy that Modjeska posits: Is it possible to create a painting (Lily) and also put together the family life/dinner party that represents the Mrs. Ramsay style of womanhood? Ford was in many ways a selfish man who expected Stella to put his life and art first; but Woolf knew all too well the emotional appeal and pull of being the 'angel of the house,' particularly to a man who was talented, intelligent and deeply damaged by the war.
I didn't really know much about Australian art -- and even though the larger questions of art and feminism were most interesting to me, it was also really worthwhile to learn more about the art (if not the art critics of the time, who were rather a bore). There are 42 coloured plates of some of Cossington-Smith's most highly regarded paintings, and those alone were worth the price and time spent reading this book.
Modjeska talks about the life and the art, and does so in a way that is sometimes scholarly -- but mostly quite personal. She, the author, is very much a presence in the text -- particularly when she is musing about Cossington-Smith's emotions/motivations/thoughts. Although C-S left a great and comprehensive legacy of art, there is almost nothing in the way of letters or journals or other primary sources. The case of Bowen is quite different as she was a prolific letter writer and journalist -- and was both written about (Ford Madox Ford, Jean Rhys) and left her own memoir (Drawn from Life) as a means of explaining herself. In Bowen's case, though, there is a sense that her artistic output was compromised and limited; that her life could never quite accommodate art to the extent that her talent deserved. Bowen had a child, a difficult partner, moved many times, and had financial problems all of her adult life. Cossington-Smith, on the other hand, had none of these particular worries or claims on her time.
Modejeska has particularly perceptive things to say about Virginia Woolf's experiments in life and art -- and how that impacted her thinking about these two women who were Woolf's exact contemporaries. I was particularly interested in Stella Bowen's story, partly because of the choices she made and partly because I knew a bit about her from her 'role' as Ford Madox Ford's longtime partner and muse. (If you've ever read Parade's End, she was the inspiration for Valentine Wannop.) Bowen and Ford were members of that glorious expat scene in 1920s Paris, and in that sense her story is full of fascination for me. Her 'story' also fits into the To the Lighthouse dichotomy that Modjeska posits: Is it possible to create a painting (Lily) and also put together the family life/dinner party that represents the Mrs. Ramsay style of womanhood? Ford was in many ways a selfish man who expected Stella to put his life and art first; but Woolf knew all too well the emotional appeal and pull of being the 'angel of the house,' particularly to a man who was talented, intelligent and deeply damaged by the war.
I didn't really know much about Australian art -- and even though the larger questions of art and feminism were most interesting to me, it was also really worthwhile to learn more about the art (if not the art critics of the time, who were rather a bore). There are 42 coloured plates of some of Cossington-Smith's most highly regarded paintings, and those alone were worth the price and time spent reading this book.
March 17, 2008
Hard to put down, this is the wonderful story about 2 Australian women artists at the start of the 20th century, Stella Bowen and Grace Cossington Smith. Both very different stories but both incredible. If you love art and/or Autralian History and also love reading about independent women then this book is for you
February 17, 2025
Amazing what one can pick up in a laundrymat. This is a tour-de-force. The second “half” of the book did, because of a paucity of primary source material, require the author to exercise some extraordinary feats of imagination and conjecture, and might be as much a reflection of the author’s ideological predisposition, rather than a portrayal of Grace as she was. But it is never possible to truly divine the interior motivations of an artist. This was an extremely interesting and beautiful try to do just that. Superb colour reproductions are provided.
September 16, 2021
Drucilla Modjeska’s opening to Stravinsky’s Lunch speaks of a woman’s place in art - particularly pre-second wave feminism - as struggle, as ghostly, and implies, to an extent, that it’s not so dissimilar to today. I would’ve loved to have stayed with the comparison as she entered into the lives of Stella Bowen and Grace Cossington Smith, but the book is really fixed on them. The book is more duo-biography than autoethnography, which I’d geared up for in those initial pages. Still, Modjeska is an intelligent writer and I enjoyed riding on the waves of her telling. More books on female artists, please!
May 8, 2017
One of my favourite books.
Women artists were leaders in the Modernist movement in Australia between the two World Wars. This books looks at two, whose lives are like a mirror image of each other, Stella Bowen and Grace Cossington Smith. More than a straightforward biography, it addresses the dilemma of love and art. Do women have to sacrifice one for the other?
Modjeska's motif is a story she first heard from a friend. She says: "It isn't much of a story, simply that when Stravinsky was in mid-composition, he insisted that his family ate lunch in silence. The slightest sound, a murmur, even a whisper, could ruin his concentration and destroy an entire work."
"It's not a particularly unusual story - great male artists have demanded more than that in the name of Art - and yet it has worked on me, and in me, in ways that it has taken me a long time to understand. What began, for me, as an argument has become taken into my life as a kind of meditation."
At the time Bowen and Smith were developing as artists, Virginia Woolf was writing that in order for a woman to succeed as an artist she needed A Room Of One's Own and 500 pounds a year - ie an income sufficient for self-support.
Stella Bowen was born in 1893, Grace Cossington Smith in 1892. They led extremely different lives. Bowen went to europe, met and fell in love with a writer, Ford Madox Ford, spent a decade keeping house for him, and raising their child (which she continued to do after they separated). She lived in England and France from the evee of WW1, and never returned to Australia. Smith, on the other hand, lived for most of her life in a (then) semi-rural, outer suburb of Sydeny, bucolicly middle-class. She had the financial support of her encouraging family, who facilitated her art. One sister remained unmarried, and for most of the time kept house.
Modjeska said in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald:
"It is very tough to be a woman and an artist. It has always been tough to be a woman and an artist. I have had a pretty good run as a writer, but even I have tasted enough of it to know what it has been like for women before. Life intrudes. Love intrudes. Women don't seem to be able to separate the two, women don't seem to be permitted to separate the two, like the blokes are able to do. And what is interesting, the more I explored this, the more I realised that women are complicit in the whole thing, too. The whole question became very complex."
The book is beautifully illustrated, with colour plates that are a pleasurable enhancement to the text. It is an engrossing and highly engaging read.
Women artists were leaders in the Modernist movement in Australia between the two World Wars. This books looks at two, whose lives are like a mirror image of each other, Stella Bowen and Grace Cossington Smith. More than a straightforward biography, it addresses the dilemma of love and art. Do women have to sacrifice one for the other?
Modjeska's motif is a story she first heard from a friend. She says: "It isn't much of a story, simply that when Stravinsky was in mid-composition, he insisted that his family ate lunch in silence. The slightest sound, a murmur, even a whisper, could ruin his concentration and destroy an entire work."
"It's not a particularly unusual story - great male artists have demanded more than that in the name of Art - and yet it has worked on me, and in me, in ways that it has taken me a long time to understand. What began, for me, as an argument has become taken into my life as a kind of meditation."
At the time Bowen and Smith were developing as artists, Virginia Woolf was writing that in order for a woman to succeed as an artist she needed A Room Of One's Own and 500 pounds a year - ie an income sufficient for self-support.
Stella Bowen was born in 1893, Grace Cossington Smith in 1892. They led extremely different lives. Bowen went to europe, met and fell in love with a writer, Ford Madox Ford, spent a decade keeping house for him, and raising their child (which she continued to do after they separated). She lived in England and France from the evee of WW1, and never returned to Australia. Smith, on the other hand, lived for most of her life in a (then) semi-rural, outer suburb of Sydeny, bucolicly middle-class. She had the financial support of her encouraging family, who facilitated her art. One sister remained unmarried, and for most of the time kept house.
Modjeska said in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald:
"It is very tough to be a woman and an artist. It has always been tough to be a woman and an artist. I have had a pretty good run as a writer, but even I have tasted enough of it to know what it has been like for women before. Life intrudes. Love intrudes. Women don't seem to be able to separate the two, women don't seem to be permitted to separate the two, like the blokes are able to do. And what is interesting, the more I explored this, the more I realised that women are complicit in the whole thing, too. The whole question became very complex."
The book is beautifully illustrated, with colour plates that are a pleasurable enhancement to the text. It is an engrossing and highly engaging read.
December 15, 2023
In this wonderful book, Drusilla lovingly follows the lives of Australian artists Stella Bowen and Grace Cossington Smith, two female artists from the same generation who faced very different challenges in being recognised as serious artists.
Stravinsky required absolute silence from his family when he was working, and this book opens by considering the compromise between art and domestic life, whether one can be a 'great artist' without another sacrificing their dreams to take care of life. Stella Bowen, who the first half of the book focuses on, faces some of these problems through her relationship with Ford Maddox Ford, while the second half of the book contemplates Grace Cossington Smith's very different circumstances, but circumstances that required the support of a sister who did most of the house work.
This hardback edition was beautifully done and featured two sections of photos with high quality paper.
Stravinsky required absolute silence from his family when he was working, and this book opens by considering the compromise between art and domestic life, whether one can be a 'great artist' without another sacrificing their dreams to take care of life. Stella Bowen, who the first half of the book focuses on, faces some of these problems through her relationship with Ford Maddox Ford, while the second half of the book contemplates Grace Cossington Smith's very different circumstances, but circumstances that required the support of a sister who did most of the house work.
This hardback edition was beautifully done and featured two sections of photos with high quality paper.
June 21, 2018
The most amazing writing I have struck for a long time. It’s heavy going - a bit like reading a text-book but there are countless sentences and passages you would like to write down and keep. It’s a story based around questios such as “Can love and art co-exist?”, why a man’s art is seen as a profession and woman’s art as a dabbler?, can a professional portrait painter maintain his honesty?, what part does money play in an artist’s ability to apint what he/she wants? It was a fascinating story/stories absolutely enhanced by the pictures that were shown and explained. Not easy, but so worth the read.
October 10, 2022
I discovered this book in Anne Manne's postscript ("Up Amongst The Men") to Motherhood. I'll quote her review here:
"Drusilla Modejska's Stravinsky's Lunch is a wonderful book. It is a remarkable achievement because it is a long, truthful meditation on women and art and life—or the ethic of care—not distorted by the corrosive acid of resentment.
Modjeska's beautifully written book sees the tension between art and motherhood, what women do in the domestic realm, but also shows how that creativity can also come out of a female way of being in the world."
"Drusilla Modejska's Stravinsky's Lunch is a wonderful book. It is a remarkable achievement because it is a long, truthful meditation on women and art and life—or the ethic of care—not distorted by the corrosive acid of resentment.
Modjeska's beautifully written book sees the tension between art and motherhood, what women do in the domestic realm, but also shows how that creativity can also come out of a female way of being in the world."
August 25, 2020
I enjoyed this book particularly reading about an Australian female artist who I hadn't heard of and to top it all off she was the mistress of Ford Maddox Ford. I also gained an insight into Grace Cossington Smith - I knew of her works and seen them at various galleries in Australia but didn't know much about her - in the early part of the 20th century life wasn't particularly easy if you weren't self sufficient, financially that is.
January 7, 2023
Modjeska's writing about the Sisters in Hugh Ramsay's painting, and about Stella Bowen, is wonderful. I was disappointed in the section on Grace Cossington Smith: there is little remaining documentary evidence (compared to the letters of Stella Bowen) and so the writing is fleshed out with rather over-wrought speculation. Nevertheless, an intriguing book with much to offer for an understanding of Australian women artists in the early-mid 20th century.
March 28, 2023
Okay I didn’t actually finish the book for book club. It was interesting to learn about two talented women artists of Australia that struggled to be recognised due to their commitment to family and especially demanding partners or just not getting seen because they were woman. And lovely colour plates if selected artworks. But just too dense for me. Probably a good academic work. Just not for me for a regular read.
January 25, 2026
Outstanding read for me; I learnt so much, fascinating central thesis and so well written. Who knew I would be so taken with a book on art history?! Loved that the author put herself in the story at times and loved the wonderful deep dives into the various paintings of the two artists concerned. Didn’t treat me as a total newby in this area with contempt but gathered me up totally and took me along for the ride! Such an unexpected and totally enthralling read for me.
June 20, 2017
Brilliant. It experiments with the nonfiction form of biography by exploring the author's reaction to the images the women painted as well as what little is known about the two Australian artists. A commanding look at how to sustain an artistic life in the face of cultural indifference.
June 2, 2024
A well researched biography of two Australian women artists, Stella Bowen and Grace Cossington Smith. An interesting look at how hard it is for a woman to live a creative life. The section on Stella Bowen is much better, Grace Cossington Smith did not leave letters, diaries etc.
November 13, 2022
Loved this book! I don’t think you need to have an appreciation of art to enjoy this book. Great women. Strong, incredibly determined and passionate for their craft.
May 10, 2023
Good insightful writing about both art and life, but I enjoyed Stella Bowen's story much more than that of Grace Cossington Smith.
February 18, 2025
Interesting background information about the careers of Stella Brown and Grace Cossington Smith and their lasting influence on Australian art
September 18, 2025
Particularly enjoyed the second half about Grace Cossington Smith, loved the author’s musings.
January 21, 2026
Feminist memoir of Australian modernist artists Stella Bowen & Grace Cossington Smith. They didn't cross paths & had quite different lives so it comes in two parts. To be fair I prefer essays to non-fiction books so I waivered & took forever to read this - encouraged by a friend's enthusiasm for the book & my own love of Modjeska's later & more sophisticated novel set in PNG. It's well written but somewhat dated & very middle class. There is so much speculation as to 'does this painting represent X's struggle with the limitations of X and misogyny X'. I don't know if she's wrong but I'm not sure if I am completely content with art by women being so engulfed within their social & historical landscapes. Yes there is a context but also it can be about experimentations of form & colour. Does that self-portrait show a woman who has known passion or is the artist just engaged in an aesthetic conversation? So it was a bit of a trudge at times but nonetheless written with flair & intelligence about some truly worthwhile artists.
May 5, 2014
An insight into life in the early 20th century for women artists. Not an easy life by any means and one in which art versus love is discussed; can they function together or will there always be a pull to one or the other? Biographies of Stella Bowen and Grace Cossington Smith two of Australia's great women painters whose work was never really recognized during their lifetime for it's significance to Australian history as part of the first wave of modernism in Australia.
April 6, 2016
I loved this book when I first read it 10 years ago. I re-visited it because one of the womnen artists Ms Modjeska writes about is Stella Bown and I had just finished reading Ms Bowen's 1940 memoir.
If you have any interest in the lives of women, in art, in the culture of the first half of the 20th century, in biography, this is a must read book. Not only are the words beautiful but it's well publicshed with greaat colour and black and white reprints of art.
If you have any interest in the lives of women, in art, in the culture of the first half of the 20th century, in biography, this is a must read book. Not only are the words beautiful but it's well publicshed with greaat colour and black and white reprints of art.
March 16, 2007
Wonderful creative biography of two female Australian artists. Fascinating read, both engaging on a literary/personal level and wonderful learning about their art. There are also good colour prints of artworks in the book.
September 5, 2010
I thought what a bore i need to read this book for my art course and now i think what a great BOOK and a fantastic writer , i need to find more of her books! pronto!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 28, 2011
Disappointing
June 1, 2023
I read this book five years ago and I still think about it frequently.
April 23, 2017
Loved the passionate and insightful journey through the two Australian artists lives. Art history, feminist history and Australian cultural history all woven together beautifully.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews