It is known that among these founders were Daisy Stone, Tina Gowdie, Annie Gates, Kate Allan, Ella Thorn, Henrietta Maria Gulliver and a Miss Stock (otherwise unidentified, who died in 1906).

[1] Many of its early members were plein air painters and identified with the Heidelberg School, which was regarded widely as a male group but which involved many women.

The interest in the decorative arts at the opening of the twentieth century attracted other members who were significant craftspeople.

By the 1920s, the Society was assimilating the generation of professional women artists emerging from the Melbourne National Gallery School, with significant women artists, representatives of both the Meldrum tonal school and modernism, being invited to join.

[3] MSWPS has met at heritage-listed Ola Cohn House 41-43 Gipps Street, East Melbourne since the sculptor's death in 1964.