Kerrmuller Collection, the Sunshine Coast art gallery exhibiting contemporary, abstract, modern, traditional artworks

Clarice Majoribanks Beckett (21st March 1887– 7th July 1936) was an Australian painter born in Casterton, Victoria.

Her works are featured in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of South Australia.      

She was the daughter of Joseph Clifden Beckett, a bank manager, and his wife Elizabeth Kate, née Brown. Her grandfather was John Brown, a Scottish master builder who had designed and built Como House and its gardens in South Yarra, Victoria.   She was a boarder at Queen's College, Ballarat until 1903, before spending a year at Melbourne Church of England Girls' Grammar School. She showed artistic ability, and after leaving school took private lessons in charcoal drawing at Ballarat.   She is recognised as one of Australia's most important modernist artists. Despite a talent for portraiture and a keen public appreciation for her still-lives, Beckett preferred the solo, outdoor process of painting landscapes. She relentlessly painted sea and beachscapes, rural and suburban scenes, often enveloped in the atmospheric effects of early mornings or evening. Her subjects were often drawn from the Melbourne bayside suburb of Beaumaris, where she lived for most of her life, caring for her ailing parents during the day and spending time around dawn and dusk painting.   She died of pneumonia in a hospital at Sandringham aged 48, and was buried in the Cheltenham Memorial Park (Wangara Road) not far from another noted female artist, Mary Vale.