Ada May Plante (1875–1950), artist, was born in New Zealand and came to Melbourne with her family in 1888. Between 1894 and 1899 she studied at the National Gallery School, where Hugh Ramsay, Margaret Preston and Max Meldrum were among her fellow students. Nicknamed 'Venus' for her magnificent red hair, she won three annual prizes for drawing and one for still-life painting. After holding her first exhibition with the Victorian Artists' Society in 1901, she travelled to Europe with another of her cohorts, Christina Asquith Baker; the pair allegedly living off biscuits while studying at the Académie Julien in Paris from 1902 to 1904. On returning to Melbourne, Plante continued to exhibit with the Victorian Artists' Society; in 1907 she was awarded prizes for portrait and figure painting at the Women’s Work Exhibition. Having shifted to post-impressionism during the 1920s, she became associated with the Melbourne Contemporary Group and exhibited consistently with the Society of Women Painters and Sculptors. From 1934 until 1947, she lived with other artists such as Lina Bryans and Ian Fairweather at Darebin Bridge House, near Heidelberg. Plante held her only solo show at George's Gallery in 1945, from which the National Gallery of Victoria acquired a painting, Quinces, later judged among the best of the modern Australian works to feature in their 1949 rehang. Plante lived shyly and narrowly on an inherited income, and spent her final years living with Christina Baker in Melbourne's east. Her work is represented in most major Australian galleries.
