project. In Rix Nicholas's imagery costumes embodied the exoticism of the East and signified its sense of cultural 'otherness'. On the other hand, Hoorn argues that Rix and her sister were to a significant extent counter-orientalist: they focussed on the common nature of human experience rather than cultural expressions of difference and they sought to portray everyday life in Tangier as they found it, rather than presenting generalised views of the orient. Her works similarly reflect a modernist approach to the empirical: in using the bright light of north Africa to help bring out the structures and shapes that made up visual impressions. Hoorn wrote: She did not seek out or embellish her pictures with the "orientalist" stereotypes that she had learned while growing up in Melbourne...In her writing and painting, she actively campaigned against what she saw as the fakery of "orientalism". Her pastel drawings and oils strive to present an accurate account of the dress, manners and appearance of her subjects. Stylistically, Rix's Moroccan paintings have been characterised as the "most abstract, flat and post-impressionistic of her career". Rix Nicholas's approach may have been influenced by Matisse: they stayed in the same hotel in Tangier at the same time for nearly two months, travelled to Tétouan during the same week, and may be in a photograph together taken during that trip. She was one of the first Australians to paint post-impressionist landscapes, including Men in the Market Place, Tangier (1914) and View of Tangier (1914), produced during a second visit to the city. They demonstrate the development of her style at the time: loose brush strokes, a palette confined to a few low-keyed colours, and an emphasis on shadow and light, affecting both the overall impression made by the picture and the treatment of individual figures. The 1912 trip represented a landmark in her work, led to several exhibitions and her first significant international critical acclaim. The journeys are the subject of one of the few books about the artist's work, Jeanette Hoorn's Hilda Rix Nicholas and Elsie Rix's Moroccan Idyll: Art and Orientalism. Exhibition of her first works produced immediate results: the French government purchased one of her pictures of the market in Tangier, and in 1913 she again had paintings displayed at the Paris Salon. The purchase by the French government was of a pastel drawing, Grande marché, Tanger, which she would later copy in oils.