Anne Montgomery was a respected artist, working in various media from pen and ink to oils, linocuts and etchings, who during the 1940s illustrated two children's books authored by Margaret Kiddle (q.v.).
Montgomery was immersed in Melbourne's art world from birth, through her father's business interests in stained glass and her mother's work in costume design. Her father was president of the Victorian Artists Society and Trustee of the National Gallery of Victoria. Anne Montgomery studied at the National Gallery School and during the 1930s, her work gained notice at group exhibitons. She enrolled in Napier Waller's (q.v.) mural classes at the Melbourne Technical College, later to become RMIT. She contributed two murals to the interior of Melbourne's Cafe Florintino.
In 1935 she joined the staff of RMIT, initially as a teacher in the Painting School, transferring in 1937 to the Architecture School and continued to teach there until 1974. During this period she continued to exhibit in group and individual exhibitions. She attended George Bell's prestigious drawing group, the Thursday Group, from 1948 and this focused her work towards classical modernism. Her illustrations for Moonbeam Stairs (1945) and West of Sunset (1949) contain the flowing lines of the art nouveau movement and her attention to composition and design within the field of fantasy.
