Portraits of Stella Cornelius, 1950s-1960s / drawn by Roberta Bell-Allen

PXD 1507

fonds

1950-1969

Graphic Materials, Drawings

9638041

14 drawings on 9 sheets (1 box) - pencil - various sizes

Stella Cornelius was born in Sydney in 1919. Her Jewish Russian father had fled the pogroms in the aftermath of World War I. In 1938 she married Max Cornelius, a Jewish German migrant who had arrived in Sydney in 1938 after fleeing persecution in Germany. Together they established Cornelius Furs in 1943 and their shop on the corner of King and Castlereagh Streets became a Sydney institution. As well as being the firm’s only woman buyer, Stella developed an interest in conflict resolution. In 1973 she initiated a Peace and Conflict Resolution Program for the UN Association of Australia. In 1985 she established a National Consultative Committee on Peace and Disarmament. A year later the Australian Government appointed her Australian Director of the International Year of Peace. Awarded the Order of Australia in 1987, she was instrumental in establishing Australia’s Media Peace Awards and a Bilateral Peace Treaties Proposal. She campaigned for the Centre for Conflict Resolution, which was set up at Macquarie University in 1988 and spread to other tertiary institutions as well as state schools. She was appointed vice-chair of the National Committee on Human Rights and in 2000 was lauded by Nelson Mandela for her contribution to conflict resolution. In 2005 she was nominated for the Nobel Prize. She died in 2010, the year she received the UN Association of Australia Peace Award.

Roberta Bell-Allen is a successful artist, designer and gallerist. She designed the Cornelius Furs showrooms in 1955 and has been a finalist many times in the Wynne, Blake and Sulman Prizes.

Source:
Library correspondence file.

11 portrait pencil sketches of Stella Cornelius and three sketches of her left hand on 9 sheets of paper drawn by her close friend Robera Bell-Allen over a period of approximately 20 years.

Copyright status:: In copyright - Life of artist plus 70 years
Please acknowledge:: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales and Courtesy copyright holder