departure from Australia, Rix was advised by the painter Arthur Streeton to study with many different masters, as a means of preserving her own originality. Her subsequent career reflected that advice. One of her first teachers was John Hassall, although he had initially protested that she was already a better drawer than himself. Rix thought him "simply great", and Pigot credits Hassall's simple and direct style with influencing the artist's later practice. Late in 1907, Rix moved with her sister and mother to Paris, where they lived in Montparnasse. There she met with Australian artist E. Phillips Fox, went on sketching expeditions to the Jardin du Luxembourg where Ethel Carrick Fox worked, and became a student at the Académie Delécluse, operated by academic painter Auguste Joseph Delécluse. She found his guidance in life drawing enormously valuable, though she thought his approach to colour "too drab". The following year she was taught by American impressionist Richard Emil Miller. From him she acquired the use of a relatively bright colour palette, not always naturalistic, as well as his dextrous technique; she did not, however, follow his predilection for pretty compositions, favouring more direct and clear images. Continuing to acquire skills from a wide range of artists, she next studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, including with Swiss-born illustrator Théophile Steinlen. Rix, her sister and mother, spent summers traveling together. In 1908 they journeyed through France and Italy, and later at the artists' colony at the fishing village of Étaples, in northern France. Among the artists active there was Frenchman Jules Adler, who took an interest in Rix's work, as well as many Australians, including Rupert Bunny, James Peter Quinn, Edward Officer and one of the colony's longest-term residents, Iso Rae. Around 1909, Hilda Rix met Wim Brat, an architecture student from a wealthy Dutch family. He asked Rix's mother for approval to marry her daughter, and Mrs Rix agreed. An initial engagement turned sour, however, when Rix spent time at her fiancé's home, where she found her prospective husband dominated by his mother, who strongly disapproved of the match. Rix reluctantly broke off the engagement. Rix continued to work, and was rewarded with hangings at the Paris Salon in 1911, alongside fellow Australians Arthur Streeton and George Bell. She took up study at Académie Colarossi at the time Henri Matisse was painting from the academy's models and offering an open