Australian painter and printmaker Margaret Preston helped develop modern art in Australia during the early 20th century. Her inspiration came from the colors and forms of Australia’s natural environment as well as Aboriginal culture. She advocated for a national art for the country that was based on Aboriginal art. Margaret Preston was born Margaret Rose Macpherson on April 29, 1875, in Port Adelaide, South Australia. She began studying with Australian landscape painter William Lister as a teenager and then studied still life painting at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School in Melbourne, Victoria, and at the South Australian School of Design, Painting, and Technical Arts (now the South Australian School of Art at the University of South Australia) in Adelaide. In 1904 she went to Europe, where she spent three years studying in Munich, Germany, and Paris, France. There she got her first exposure to European avant-garde paintings as well as Japanese and Chinese art. In 1907 she returned to Australia, where she taught and held exhibitions in Adelaide. After 1912 she began exhibiting her work in Paris and London. She returned to Australia in 1919 and married William Preston. The couple eventually settled in Sydney, New South Wales. In the early 1930s they moved to Berowra in the Australian bush north of Sydney, where she was inspired by Aboriginal art and began to focus on landscapes. She continued to travel for the rest of her life and to incorporate elements of Pacific and Asian art into her work. Besides creating art, Preston wrote articles, including an autobiographical essay, for the journal Art in Australia. She died on May 28, 1963, in Mosman, New South Wales.