She was born Grace Smith, in Neutral Bay, Sydney, second of five children of London-born solicitor Ernest Smith and his wife Grace, née Fisher, who was the daughter of the rector of Cossington in Leicestershire. The family moved to Thornleigh, New South Wales around 1890. Grace attended Abbotsleigh School for Girls in Wahroonga 1905–09 where Albert Collins and Alfred Coffey took art classes. From 1910 to 1911 she studied drawing with Antonio Dattilo Rubbo. From 1912 to 1914 she and her sister lived in England, staying with an aunt at Winchester where she attended drawing classes as well as classes at Stettin in Germany, and was exposed to paintings by Watteau in Berlin.
