She was appalled by the works of Russell Drysdale and William Dobell, describing the figures in their paintings as "more like victims of the German prison camps" than representations of Australian people. It seemed that the critics did not share her opinion: Dobell and Drysdale had each just won the Wynne Prize in successive years, and both would soon represent their country at the Venice Biennale. A final trip to Europe took place in 1950. She set out to show her husband the sights of a Europe she knew well, and to find a teacher of sculpture for their son Rix. She was distressed by the standards of artistic practice she found, and instead discouraged Rix from any career in the arts at all. Following her last solo exhibition, a letter from Rix Nicholas to her son expressed despair in her artistic career and summarised the professional fate of her final years: Not doing anything creative is nearly killing me. The trouble is that there is no one near me who cares whether I ever do any more work or not ... I feel the artist in me is dying and the dying is an agony ... only one's self knows the craving and the best part in one is aching unsatisfied. By this time, her health was deteriorating, and her passion for art fading. Rix Nicholas did exhibit alongside her son in a group exhibition in Sydney, in 1954; she presented two oil paintings, while her son had the largest sculpture in the show, titled The Shearer. She died in Delegate on 3 August 1961. Critical summation Gender was a recurring theme in Rix Nicholas's career, for better and for worse. Praise from a French art critic for her abilities was expressed by saying "[mademoiselle] Rix paints like a man!". An Australian critic was unsure what to say, admiring her composition but declaring her technique "strangely unfeminine", while another vitriolic review referred to the "pseudo-masculinity" of her works. Pigot considered that Rix Nicholas's career was ultimately penalised by her unwillingness to play by the male establishment's rules when she sought to stake out a woman's place in nationalist art in mid-twentieth century Australia. Sasha Grishin wrote that her "feminist tendencies and modernist touches were met with hostility". Art historian Catherine Speck had a different perspective on Rix Nicholas's post-World War I work, suggesting that it never subsequently attained the