1963

Long time Geelong Gallery supporter and former President of the Geelong Art Gallery Association Frank Evan Richardson passed away in 1963. 

The son of former mayor, Horace Frank Richardson (who approved the Geelong Art Gallery Association), Frank joined the committee in 1929, was honorary secretary between 1930-46 and was the President from 1946 until a few months before his death. 

In July 1963, a cocktail party was held so that J G McIntyre, the Managing Director of Ford Motor Company, could present Geelong Gallery with six works to be acquired for the permanent collection. 

Among these works was Sorrowing mother by modernist Australian artist Constance Stokes. In this portrait, Stokes references religious iconography to pay tribute to her mother, who had died twenty-four years earlier in 1936.

Bearing a contemplative expression, the central figure represents, as the writer Andrea Loyd has observed, 'a composite portrait of her mother, the woman mourning for her (Stokes) and in turn the sorrowing mother of Jesus'.