Wilson put his father – the family historian, an absolute genius at Ancestry.com – on the case and he found, on the 1933 Commonwealth voters list, a Marjorie Marie Roberts, who noted her profession in as an artist model.

“It was jumping up and down on the way to ‘bingo’, basically,” Wilson says.

Marjorie Marie Patricia Roberts, born near Auckland in 1912, the third of six children, comes from a strong Australian lineage. Her grandfather, Sydney banker Melnotte Roberts, fought the Boxer Rebellion in Beijing for Naval Artillery Volunteers in 1900 and was one of the founders of the Manly Surf Life Saving Club.

His great-grandfather, Charles Roberts, owned a number of pubs in Sydney, including the Crown and Anchor, located at the corner of George and Market streets. There is a portrait of Charles in the National Portrait Gallery.

Marjorie’s sister, Pamela Meyers, now 100 (and, coincidentally, the grandmother of a former Wilson colleague), told Wilson about life at home with their parents during the worst years. of Depression. Marjorie, a young beauty, worked as a hostess for the Liberty Theater and the owners put her forward dressed as movie heroines to attract customers.

There, it seems likely, on Pitt Street just two blocks from Dorrit Black’s Modern Art Center, she was spotted by the artists for whom she would later become a model: Crowley, Black, and also the winner of the ‘Archibald Arthur Murch.

It turned out that there was another portrait of Marjorie: the famous Murch painting Rest hour, of a topless woman relaxing with her family, hung on the walls of the NSW Art Gallery since 1933.

Marjorie quit modeling (her mother didn’t approve) and married a respectable police officer, rugby union player named Rex Larnach-Jones. The surname led Wilson to Mary Larnach-Jones, Marjorie’s daughter-in-law. An artist herself with a long career including several unsuccessful submissions from Archibald, now exhibiting from her studio in the Macedon Ranges north of Melbourne, it was Mary who revealed the connection to Murch’s portrait.

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“It’s such a great story,” Wilson says. “The whole Archie 100 research project has been a big mystery hunt … and there are many more stories to tell.”

The painting is now on display at the Geelong Gallery, where the Archie 100 is on tour.

Jason Smith, director and CEO of the Geelong Gallery, admires Wilson’s detective work.

“Either way, the already understated and dominant presence of this portrait is amplified by the fascinating biographical details we now know of Marjorie, and what was clearly her own love of art and life. modern.”

Archie 100: A Century of the Archibald Prize is at the Geelong Gallery until February 20.