Margaret Rose Preston (29 April 1875 – 28 May 1963) was an Australian painter, printmaker and writer on art who is regarded as one of Australia's leading modernists of the early 20th century.

[1] Among her students were such notable artists as Bessie Davidson, Gladys Reynell, and Stella Bowen,[1] who referred to her as "a red-headed little firebrand of a woman, who was not only an excellent painter, but a most inspiring teacher".

[5] After her mother died in 1903, Preston and Bessie Davidson traveled to Europe, where they stayed from 1904 to 1907, with sojourns in Munich and Paris and shorter trips to Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, and Africa.

[1][3] From Japanese art in particular she acquired a preference for asymmetrical composition, a focus on plants as subject matter, and an appreciation of pattern as an organizing method.

[5] Preston went back to France (Paris and Brittany) in 1912 with Gladys Reynell, but when World War I broke out, they moved to Great Britain.

[1][3] Later, she and Reynell taught pottery and basket-weaving as therapy for shell-shocked soldiers at the Seale Hayne Military Hospital in Devonshire.

[3] The Modernists' analytical approach to design, sense of underlying form, and simplified pictorial space would all become hallmarks of her work.

[3] The influence of her European studies can be seen, for example, in her 1927 still life Implement Blue,[6] with its geometric forms, muted palette, and stark lighting.

On her way back to Australia, she met her future husband, William George "Bill" Preston, a recently discharged second lieutenant of the Australian Imperial Force.

[1] Preston's friend Leon Gellert noted that Bill seemed to regard it as a national duty to keep his beloved Margaret happy and artistically productive.

A harbour-side suburb, Mosman has long attracted artists and writers such as Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, Harold Herbert, Dattilo Rubbo, Lloyd Rees, Nancy Borlase, and Ken Done.

[3] Preston also capitalized on the forum that women's magazines provided in allowing her to reach a wide audience for both her work and her opinions on the future of Australian art.

Readers of the April 1929 edition of Woman's World were prodded to keep the covers of issues on which Preston's works had been reproduced and to frame them as pictures.

Flowers such as the banksia, waratah, gum blossom and wheelflower offered Preston specimens for her radical, asymmetrical compositions.

[4] She felt that printmaking helped to keep her work fresh, writing: "Whenever I thought I was slipping in my art, I went into crafts–woodcuts, monotypes, stencils and etchings.

[3] She continued her adaptations of Australian Indigenous art, deploying Aboriginal design motifs and natural-pigment colour schemes in her work.

[3][20] Preston won a silver medal at the Exposition Internationale, Paris in 1937,[21] and that year became a foundation member of, and exhibited with, Robert Menzies' anti-modernist organisation, the Australian Academy of Art.

The exhibition took its lead from Geelong Gallery’s significant print holdings, chiefly Margaret Preston’s hand-coloured woodcut Fuchsia and balsam 1928 (purchased in 1982).