Betty Churcher dies, aged 84

Former National Gallery of Australia director and national treasure, Betty Churcher, has died at the age of 84.

Churcher was one of the most adored figures in the Australian art community and a formidable and talented arts administrator.

She was known to thousands of Australians as the face of several television series on art, such as the ABC’s Betty Churcher’s Take 5.

Churcher was appointed director of the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) in 1990, a position she held until 1997.

She was the first and so far only female director of the NGA.

Before that, she was director of the Art Gallery of Western Australia.

While at the NGA, Churcher earned the moniker 'Betty Blockbuster' for bringing a string of high-profile art exhibitions of European masterpieces to Australian shores.

She also acquired Arthur Streeton's Golden Summer for $3.5 million for the NGA.

Current NGA director Gerald Vaughan has described Ms Churcher as one of Australia's great artistic educators.

Dr Vaughn said she not only brought masterpieces to Australian shores, but she was able to explain how important they were to the Australian public.

Here she is speaking to Fran Kelly in 2011 (Post continues after video)

"She was a person who loved art. She loved talking about art, she was an artist, her husband Roy, who died last year was an artist, one of her four sons, Peter Churcher, is a very distinguished contemporary Australian artist," he said.

"I have seen her not only on television but in a gallery situation communicating with the public about a picture."

Churcher was born in Brisbane in 1931 and attended Somerville House school.

She said her first encounter with real art was when her father took her to the Queensland Art Gallery as a child, and she saw the Blandford Fletcher painting Evicted of a mother and child standing on the street after being evicted from their home.

"It was like stepping on a magic carpet because off I went!" she said.

"I could become part of that street, I could associate.The paintings that I most like are the ones that demand a second, and a third and a fourth look."

"The little girl was probably a little bit younger than me but not a lot."

Churcher began teaching art at her alma mater and said it was there that she "first felt the joy of being able to share an enthusiasm".

She went on to study art in London.

She was an accomplished artist in her younger years, but put painting to one side when she married fellow artist Roy Churcher.

She raised four sons.

Here's Betty Churcher speaking at the Sydney Writers festival (Post continues after video)

A few years ago, longtime friend and former governor-general Quentin Bryce remembered how Churcher's motherhood status attracted the media's attention when she was appointed director of the NGA.

"Who will ever forget those headlines on her appointment?" Dame Quentin said.

"Betty who? 58-year-old mother of four comes in," one of the headlines read.

Lasting vision for artworks

Churcher returned to drawing late in her life when faced with deteriorating eyesight.

A melanoma in one eye and macular degeneration in the other slowly robbed her of the ability to see the artworks she had loved and dedicated her life to.

"I thought, now those paintings, the ones I really love in the Prado and the National Gallery, can I remember them?"

Betty Churcher took her love of art to television to expand public knowledge.

"And I realised that I couldn't."

So Churcher toured the great galleries of Europe, sketching after hours to put her recollections of much-loved masterpieces on paper - and to imprint every detail and brushstroke firmly in her mind's eye.

"The paintings that I most like are the ones that demand a second, and a third and a fourth look," she said.

"And each time you look, they've got something more to give you.

"I know that I could look at Velazquez's Maid of Honour until I died and I still couldn't get to the bottom of it, to find out how it was that he did it."

Through a life spent painting, drawing, teaching and writing about art, as well as managing the nation's premier gallery, Churcher has left behind a far more enthusiastic and sophisticated art audience in Australia.

"They say fools rush in where angels fear to tread," she said in one of her last interviews.

"Well, I'm the fool, but I'm glad I'm the fool because I've rushed in and done things that seemed on the surface to be almost impossible."