There, with the encouragement of artist Henrietta Gulliver and the members of the city's Women's Art Club, Rix Nicholas began to reconstruct her career as a professional artist. It did not take long. In November, she was among the members of the Club whose works were displayed at the Athaeneum Hall, where a critic described her as the "dominating personality of the show". At the same time, in Melbourne's Guild Hall she held a large exhibition of her European and north African paintings, sketches and drawings, with over a hundred works on display. Several were sold, including In Picardy, purchased by the National Gallery of Victoria. Noting the artist's success in Paris and London, the reviewer for The Argus admired her "appreciation of character and talents for observation and representation", while The Age was struck by "the influence of modern French Impressionism in [her paintings'] fearless handling of sunlight and open air effects." When the exhibition travelled to Sydney in 1919, reviews were likewise positive both from newspapers and from her peers such as Julian Ashton, Antonio Dattilo Rubbo and Grace Cossington Smith. The Sydney show also resulted in the purchase of several of her works by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In 1919, Rix Nicholas moved to Sydney and settled in Mosman, where she made new friends and produced a range of landscapes and outdoor portraits, often continuing her post-impressionist style. The artist experienced further success in her exhibitions and with regular favourable reviews in the press, such as for her show in the Queen Victoria Markets in September 1920. Nevertheless, Pigot has argued that her place in the Australian art world at the time was complex, and her style was affected by vigorous debate around the emergence of modernism, which was being resisted by local critics. Her experience of this more conservative Australia, and the effects of the deaths of all those close to her, contributed to Rix Nicholas abandoning her more experimental art, and returning to more academic and figurative subjects. This ultimately had a detrimental effect on the long-term trajectory of her career. Pigot argues that her refusal to conform to the gendered expectations of the Australian artistic establishment led to her rejection. In 1922, a competition was launched by the trustees of the Melbourne Public Library for a mural to commemorate the Great War. Rix Nicholas learned of the competition and quickly prepared