Evelyn Chapman studied with Dattilo Rubbo in Sydney and travelled overseas to paint in Paris, where she exhibited at the Salon. A few weeks after the end of World War I she took up the opportunity to visit the battlefields of France with her father, who was attached to the New Zealand War Graves Commission. Thus, she became the first Australian female artist to depict the devastated battlefields, towns and churches of the western front. Chapman remained overseas with her father, an organist who played in Dieppe, Venice and elsewhere, and married a brilliant, though domineering, Australian organist herself. After she married, she had to give up painting, but she encouraged her daughter to pursue art. For the rest of her life, Chapman lived in England, only returning to Australia for a visit in 1960. The art gallery of New South Wales has her 1911 portrait A Dattilo Rubbo, Girl in Red Hat c. 1918, and a number of her paintings of France, Belgium and England. The Australian War Memorial, too, has several of her key French scenes.
