Ruth Tuck

Ruth Edith Tuck OAM (22 July 1914 – 10 October 2008) was a modernist painter of South Australia, noted for joint exhibitions with her husband Mervyn Ashmore Smith (11 December 1904 – 18 March 1994), and her influence as a teacher of painting.

The Ruth Tuck Art School, founded by her in 1955, continues to operate in Adelaide.

[2] She met Mervyn Smith in 1943 and married him on 15 October the same year;[3] they lived in Adelaide, then Mervyn moved to Newcastle, New South Wales in 1949, where he was employed as a County Council planning officer; she joined him few years later.

[4] In 1953 they returned to Adelaide, where they remained and held numerous joint exhibitions of their watercolors, both modernist in outlook with Mervyn's work being generally characterised as the more ambitious.

[1] The Ruth Tuck Scholarship for Visual Arts was awarded by the state government via Carclew until 2016.