Clara Southern

Clara Southern ( born October 3, 1861 in Kyneton, Australia, † December 15, 1940 in Surry Hills, Australia) was an Australian artist of the Heidelberg School, also known as Australian Impressionism.

Southern studied at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School in George Frederick McCubbin and Folingsby. In Melbourne, she shared a studio in 1888 the Grosvenor Chambers with Jane Sutherland. In 1908 she had built an artistic community of young landscape painters in Warrandyte, a town on the Yarra River approximately 30 kilometers from Melbourne. The community included Penleigh Boyd and Harold Herbert. Although their works were admired by the artists of their time, they were not very well known. Southern married John Flinn, but usually put out under their original name.

An Old Bee Farm, which can be seen in the National Gallery of Victoria, is one of her best known works. It is one of 56 paintings in Lloyd O'Neil Classic Australian Paintings, and was used as cover illustration for Kay Schaffer's book Women and the Bush: Forces of Desire used in the Australian Cultural Tradition ( 1988).