Originally from India, ‘Madame’ Durga Lall (b. 1907) ran a small gallery in London in the 1950’s. It is said that she represented F.N. Souza (1924-2002), another sub-contenient ex-pat (from Goa) who later went on to be one of the first painters to achieve international recognition from a newly independant India and has been refered to as one of India’s most influential Modern-era painters. He named Durga Lall the Godmother of his first born child who remembers her for the love she had for Souza and his wife.

In the 1950’s she exhibited her own work at the Royal London Institute. However Lall’s gallery was not financially successful and she moved to Australia, then to New Zealand where in 1962 she was the Director of the The Cultural Centre Art Gallery on Elizabeth Street in Mount Victoria, Wellington. That year the Cultural Centre mounted an exhibiton of paintings by Gordon H Brown later to become a well known New Zealand art commentator, writer and curator.

Eventually returning to Sydney, Lall continued producing her own lithographs. In 1970 Durga Lall gifted a portrait painting to Queen Elizabeth II on her Royal Tour visit to Australia. She was described by photographer Peter Solness, in a 1989 Sydney Morning Herald article as a poet, artist, political essayist, nurse, psychic and an advote for human rights and animal welfare.