Who was Diana Lang?

March 14, 2006 12:56 AM

A friend has a painting by Jock Frater, dated 1920 titled "Diana Lang". We know who the artist was, but are intrigued to learn more about the subject. Anyone with expertise on glam socialites of Australia in the Roaring Twenties in the house?
posted by Pericles to media & arts (5 comments total)

Unfortunately, I've been unable to find any record of her accomplishments, but her father was Jack 'Big Fella' Lang and her uncle was the poet Henry Lawson, so she would have moved in esteemed social circles (close contacts in art and politics). Perhaps a bio of Jack Lang would be a good place to start looking for information?
posted by goo at 3:33 AM on March 14, 2006

fantastic, goo. Is the link with Jack Lang definitive, or are you assuming via the surname? (No mention of a daughter in the wikipedia article)
posted by Pericles at 4:06 AM on March 14, 2006

This page says he had "3 sons and 4 daughters" but doesn't give names; it has a bibliography that should be helpful, though.
posted by languagehat at 6:03 AM on March 14, 2006

I'm sure it is she, although I have no other cite than a recollection of a picture/ article in an old Australian Woman's Weekly. I've emailed my mum and asked her to look for it and scan it.

If it is she, her step-grandfather William McNamara was a founding member of the Australian Socialist League in 1887, and her parents were separated for a time while her father lived with another woman (March 25, 1910 - that link and this is some interesting reading on the Lawsons and the Langs, and turn of the century Australian arts and politics). Family gatherings would have been a whole lot of fun, I'm sure - suffragists, feminists, anarchists, white Australia catholics, and socialites.

Fraters can be worth a little bit - is it an original?
posted by goo at 8:29 AM on March 14, 2006

It is an original, yes, and I've admired it every time I visit. He inherited it from an Australian relative. My photo doesn't do it justice; it's an amazing picture of a really ballsy-looking woman staring straight into your eyes in a kind of "fuck you if you don't like me" way, hence my intrigue about who she was. I thank you enormously for the pointers to her indentity.
posted by Pericles at 9:14 AM on March 14, 2006