Dangar was born in
Kempsey, a town on the mid-north coast of
New South Wales, daughter of
Otho Dangar, who was a member of the
Legislative Assembly and Elizabeth Dangar. From 1906 Dangar studied art in Sydney with
Horace Moore-Jones and then at the
Julian Ashton Art School in Sydney. Dangar began teaching there in 1920, while also working at the book publishing company
Angus & Robertson. In 1926, Dangar travelled to
France with her lifelong friend and correspondent
Grace Crowley and attended
André Lhote's Academy in
Paris and his summer school at
Mirmande. Dangar returned to Sydney in 1929, but found resistance in Sydney to the
cubist-influenced style she had developed in France. Like her friends
Dorrit Black and
Grace Crowley, Dangar was strongly influenced by the
Modernist and
Cubist art movements she was exposed to in Paris. She held an exhibition in 1932 at the Musée d'Annonay, in
Annonay. She contributed to the development and understanding of modernism, particularly cubism, in Australia through her 21 year correspondence with
Grace Crowley and other Australian artists. Crowley kept the letters and gave them to the
Mitchell Library and they were subsequently collated and edited by Helen Topliss. Her letters to
Grace Crowley reveal much about the difficulties with which Dangar supported herself and her art at this time. Dangar travelled to
Morocco in 1939 and spent six months in
Fez working with and for, and learning from, local potters. However, political instability and the outbreak of
World War II caused her to cut the trip short and she was back in
France in 1940. Dangar lived in Sablons throughout the war and decided to remain there after the war. Anne Dangar died of complications from a stroke at Moly-Sabata on 4 September 1951. == Works ==