People Australia

Ethel Barringer (1883-1925) artist, teacher, peace activist 

Birth: 23 July 1883 in Adelaide, South Australia, daughter of Leonard Barringer (1844-1895), furniture salesman, and Fanny, née Page. Unmarried. Death: 1 June 1925, Blackwood, South Australia. 

• Attended Inglewood School, where she was taught by Rosa C. Fiveash.
• Instructor in etching & drawing at Adelaide School of Arts & Crafts; landscape and figure painter, etcher and enamellist; work was exhibited in Adelaide and Melbourne prior to World War I; brother and sister-in-law were also noted painters.
• In 1910 joined the South Australian Socialist Party; member Anti-Militarist League (est. 1911).
• Studied in London in 1912-1914.
• An outspoken anti-conscriptionist during WWI; one of leading S.A. activists in Australian Peace Alliance, regular speaker for the Alliance at Adelaide Botanic Park. Described by the censor as 'one of the most refined intellectuals of the peace movement'. Artistic work is commemorated in Ethel Barringer Prize at Adelaide School of Arts & Crafts.

Sources
Joy Damousi, Socialist Women in Australia, c.1890-c.1918, PhD thesis, ANU, 1987; Rachel Biven, Some forgotten . . . some remembered: women artists of South Australia from late 19th century to mid 1930s, (Norwood, 1976); A. McCulloch, Encyclopedia of Australian Art, vol. 1, p. 84