Allen wrote two books of art criticism, The Mirror of the Passing World (1928) and Painters of the Modern Mind (1929), based on her lectures.

[2] She and her sisters, Edith Margaret and Beatrice (Biddy), spent their childhood living in a staff house at the University of Melbourne where their father was an anatomy professor and the Dean of Medicine.

She was also a member of society, being friends with Ivy Brookes (daughter of Alfred Deakin) and having Dame Nellie Melba and University Vice-Chancellor Sir John Grice open some of her exhibitions.

[6] During early September 1921 Allen exhibited a set of fifty-four oil paintings at the Fine Art Society's Gallery in Melbourne.

She studied under Max Meldrum, a tonal impressionist whose students, Arnold Shore and Jock Frater, had been experimenting with modernism.

At this point, Allen was not yet a fan of modernism — she criticised Shore's work in The Sun and said that post-impressionists "create nothing but monsters–they invent the abnormal" during one of her lectures.

She ran a series of lectures at the Readers Roundtable of the People's Institute, held at the New York Public Library, where newly created adult classes were taking place and were sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation.

[13] Besides her own work, featured artists included Norman Lindsay, Thea Proctor, George Bell and Dora Toovey:[12] and one hundred paintings were shown.

Herbert Brookes, husband of Allen's friend Ivy, had been the Commissioner General for Australia in the United States from 1929 to 1930 and had approved the official stamp on the exhibition catalogue, adding the newly elected prime minister's name as his representative in New York.

[3]: 6  In a later interview with The Advertiser, on 17 June 1936, Allen mentioned all the art work exhibited had non-Australian scenery and had titles such as "Landscape in Spain" and "Bosky Dells in Surrey".

"[16] Allen's paintings — including abstracted depictions of New York skyscrapers and subways[3]: 9  — were exhibited at the Fine Art Society's Gallery between 20 and 31 August 1935.

[17] Despite the controversy — the distortion in the works was considered a lack of realism and "loss in skill" — the exhibition was a success, and conversation piece, drawing crowds until its closure.

In June 1950 Allen travelled to Alice Springs to "capture something of the strange character and beauty of central Australia for an exhibition when she returns next month to New York.

[1] The Age's art critic wrote, "[Allen]'s capabilities are most apparent when she is occupied with the rearrangement of planes and forms, and their disposition as a pictorial unity...