and submitted an entry. Three judges, all respected Melbourne academic artists, submitted a report to the trustees, who met to consider the entries received. The trustees voted six to five to grant the commission to Harold Septimus Power, despite the fact that he had not fulfilled the conditions of entry; they then withheld the judges' report from publication, decided not to exhibit any of the competition entries, and delayed awarding any prize. One newspaper reported that Rix Nicholas's entry had been one of the top three. Rix Nicholas was furious, as were some former soldiers who wrote letters to newspapers about the incident. Pigot suggests that gender was a factor: "While Rix Nicholas's claim to be a war artist was legitimate, the fact that she was a woman meant that she was denied an equal place within the discourse". The Australian War Memorial was building a collection of art commemorating the war around the time Rix Nicholas offered her triptych Pro Humanitate. But it was rejected; the acquisitions described it as 'of too intimate a character for inclusion in a public collection'. The Memorial eventually decided to purchase one of her works portraying a French woman (titled A Mother of France (1914)), but not the other work offered, which depicted an Australian soldier (A Man (1921). According to Pigot, this reflected the gendered approach taken by institutions, which considered that subjects suitable for portrayal by artists were dependent upon their sex. It may have further been influenced by the Memorial's strategy for collection development, which at that time emphasised acquisition of portraits of senior officers. Whatever the view of competition or acquisition committees, her works were "popular with the soldiers themselves, and in this way they actively shaped the image of the digger". Her paintings of war subjects were just one aspect of Rix Nicholas's developing commitment to nationalist ideals and the heroic representation of Australia. At the time of her 1919 exhibition, Rix Nicholas had commented that she wished "to show the people [of Europe] what is possessed in a land of beauty where the colour scheme is so different, and which sent so many gallant men to the struggle for liberty". In this respect she was following in the tradition of the Australian Impressionists and writers such as Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson, who extolled the virtues of the bush and pioneer life. Accompanied by her friend Dorothy