In this exemplary biography, a tender and complex portrait emerges of a tough and vulnerable artist-as all women artists must be. Janine Burke, Nora Heysen was Australia's first woman to win the Archibald Prize and Australia's first female official war artist. With unprecedented access to the archives, family and friends of Nora Heysen, the author takes us into Nora's world-from the young portraitist and flower painter working alongside her famous father, landscape painter Hans Heysen, to art school in London and an establishment that did not or would not fully recognise her talent. And from a passionate love affair against the backdrop of war in the Pacific, to her friendship with Jeffrey Smart, to the 'adopted' son Nora took into her heart and home. This is the story of an artist driven by an all-consuming desire to draw or paint-one who re-emerged at the age of seventy-eight when long-overdue attention restored her place as a significant $$$ Book jacket.