Kathleen Best OBE RRC (1910–1957), nurse and officer, grew up in Sydney where she completed nursing and midwifery training. Having worked at Wyong Hospital, the Rachel Forster Hospital for Women and Children, Sydney, and the Masonic Hospital, Ashfield, she was appointed to the Australian Army Nursing Service, AIF, and posted as matron of the 2nd/5th Australian General Hospital in Palestine in 1940. In April 1941 the hospital moved to Greece where the Anzacs were weathering a German assault and there were constant air-raids. For her courage, Best received the Royal Red Cross in 1942. She spent time in Egypt and Ethiopia before returning to Melbourne. Promoted lieutenant colonel and posted as assistant adjutant-general (women’s services), in 1944 she accepted the assistant-directorship of women’s re-establishment and training in the Department of Postwar Reconstruction. Appointed founding director of the Australian Women's Army Corps in 1951, she was promoted to honorary colonel the following year. After her death at the age of 47 she was given a military funeral in Toorak.
In this portrait of Best, Archibald Prize winning artist Charles Wheeler has captured his sitter's authority as a distinguished leader as well as a hint of her renowned sense of humour in the faint smile. This is one of a series of portraits of reproduced in The Australasian magazine in 1943 and 1944.
Purchased 2019
© Estate of Charles Wheeler
Charles Wheeler (age 62 in 1943)
Colonel Kathleen Annie Louise Best OBE RRC (age 33 in 1943)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
Well behaved women seldom make history, as the saying goes, and the National Portrait Gallery, consequently, is full of awesome Australian women who refused to conform to narrow ideas about their place and their worth.
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