Janet Dawson
MBE Mbe may refer to:
* Mbé, a town in the Republic of the Congo
* Mbe Mountains Community Forest, in Nigeria
* Mbe language, a language of Nigeria
* Mbe' language, language of Cameroon
* ''mbe'', ISO 639 code for the extinct Molala language
Molal ...
(born 1935) is an Australian artist who was a pioneer of
abstract painting
Abstract art uses visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world.
Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19t ...
in Australia in the 1960s,
having been introduced to abstraction during studies in England while she lived in Europe 1957–1960
She was also an accomplished
lithographic
Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...
printer of her own works as well as those of other renowned Australian artists,
a theatre-set and furniture designer. She studied in England and Italy on scholarships before returning to Australia in 1960.
She won the Art Gallery of New South Wales
Archibald Prize
The Archibald Prize is an Australian portraiture art prize for painting, generally seen as the most prestigious portrait prize in Australia. It was first awarded in 1921 after the receipt of a bequest from J. F. Archibald, the editor ...
in 1973 with the portrait of her husband, ''
Michael Boddy
Michael Boddy (8 March 193413 April 2014) was an English-Australian actor and writer. His best known works include co-writing the play ''The Legend of King O'Malley'' with Bob Ellis.
Personal
Boddy was born in the village of Baldersby, Yorkshire ...
Reading''.
Patrick McCaughey
Patrick McCaughey (born 1942) is an Irish-born Australian art historian and academic.
McCaughey was born in Belfast, his father being Davis McCaughey. He migrated with his family to Melbourne, Australia. when he was ten years old. His secondary ...
, 'Archibald Prize to Sydney Artist,' ''The Age'', Saturday 19 Jan 1974, p.2 She has exhibited across Australia and overseas, and her work is held in major Australian and English collections.
In 1977 she was awarded an MBE for services to art.
Career
Dawson was born in
Sydney in 1935 and spent her early years in
Forbes
''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...
.
[Gary Catalano, ‘A Natural History (Interview)’, ''Art & Australia'', Vol. 34, No. 3, 1997, p. 332-341 and illus. cover.] She started to take a keen interest in art at age 11 beginning her formal art tuition in Saturday morning classes at
H. Septimus Power’s private art school from 1946 to 1949, before living in Clarence Street,
East Malvern working as a doctor's receptionist
while she studied (1952 to 1956) at the
National Gallery of Victoria Art School in
Melbourne
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...
first under
William Dargie
Captain Sir William Alexander Dargie (4 June 1912 – 26 July 2003) was a renowned Australian painter, known especially for his portrait paintings. He won the Archibald Prize, Australia's premier award for portrait artists on eight separa ...
, who was then replaced by
Alan Sumner
Alan Robert Sumner, MBE (10 February 1911, Melbourne – 20 October 1994, Melbourne) was an Australian artist; a painter, printmaker, teacher and stained glass designer.
Education
Alan Sumner studied at Melbourne's National Gallery Art School ...
as head of school. Art critic
Robert Hughes in 1962 after Sumner's resignation wrote complaining that "since his appointment as the school's head in 1947, Mr Sumner seems to have produced no young painter whose work is of any significance whatever — except Janet Dawson, whose unquestionable talent comes, in part, from a revolt against the flaccid academism Mr Sumner has preached."
In 1955 Dawson won Gallery Art School Prizes including the
Grace Joel
Grace Jane Joel (28 May 1865–6 March 1924) was a New Zealand artist best known for her ability as a portraitist and figure painter.
Early life
Grace Joel was born in Dunedin, New Zealand on 28 May 1865, the sixth of nine children. Her Englis ...
Scholarship (Nude),
Hugh Ramsey Portrait Prize, one for an ‘Abstract Painting’, another for 'A Panel of Three Drawings from Life', a 2nd prize for a 'Head study', and the 'National Gallery Society Scholarship for best subject drawing or panel of drawings in exhibition.'
A 1955 newspaper article reports that as an art student "she concentrates mainly on semi-abstracts and enjoys working on large canvases. Murals are her particular interest" and that "her highest ambition is to win the school’s travelling scholarship" of £900 for three years study abroad, then held by West Australian painter
Frances Woolley (b.1930). Indeed, the following year she was the joint winner, with friend Kathleen Boyle, of the award;
['Girl friends win art prizes,' The Age Thursday 20 Dec 1956, p.3] the
National Gallery of Victoria
The National Gallery of Victoria, popularly known as the NGV, is an art museum in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is Australia's oldest and most visited art museum.
The NGV houses an encyclopedic art collection across two ...
Travelling Scholarship,
for a painting of three figures on the Gallery steps, reporting that she; "made a model of plasticine and painted the picture from that."
Aged 22, she embarked on the SS ''
Roma
Roma or ROMA may refer to:
Places Australia
* Roma, Queensland, a town
** Roma Airport
** Roma Courthouse
** Electoral district of Roma, defunct
** Town of Roma, defunct town, now part of the Maranoa Regional Council
*Roma Street, Brisbane, a ...
.''
International study and travel
Landing in
Genoa
Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian census, the Province of ...
in mid July 1957, and stopping at
Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...
,
Bern and
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
, Dawson arrived in
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
. There she studied at the
Slade School of Fine Art
The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...
between late 1957 and mid-1959.
In London, Janet attended an exhibition ''New American Art'' at the
Tate
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
in 1959 and was impressed by the simplicity and glowing colours of paintings by
Rothko
Mark Rothko (), born Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz (russian: Ма́ркус Я́ковлевич Ротко́вич, link=no, lv, Markuss Rotkovičs, link=no; name not Anglicized until 1940; September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970), was a Latv ...
,
Still
A still is an apparatus used to distill liquid mixtures by heating to selectively boil and then cooling to condense the vapor. A still uses the same concepts as a basic distillation apparatus, but on a much larger scale. Stills have been use ...
, and
Motherwell. In Paris she saw the work of
Dubuffet and
Miro which also had a decisive influence.
Deborah Clark notes; "The influence of European surrealism can be seen in Dawson's use of particular marks and symbols, and her admiration for the warmth and openness of American abstract painters like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko (whose work she saw at the Tate Gallery in 1959) also emerges, but her use of formal devices of abstraction is embedded in a genuine response to the sensations of the landscape itself."
She loved to draw,
so she studied
lithography
Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...
,
which allows an artist to draw directly on a
printing stone. In 1959 she won the Slade School lithography prize which included a Boise scholarship
that enabled her to travel to Italy. There, from late 1959 to early 1960, she took up residence in the hilltop village of
Anticoli Corrado
Anticoli Corrado ( Romanesco: ) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Rome in the Italian region Latium, located about northeast of Rome.
Anticoli Corrado borders the following municipalities: Mandela, Marano Equo, Rocca C ...
where the
British School at Rome retained workspaces for artists. During her three months there, Dawson made drawings of the landscape
which are held by the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the NGA. Abstraction, which she had once found disturbing, in her Italian landscape drawings appears in "sensual renderings,"
broad strokes; waves, marks and symbols that covered the paper so that hills and valleys were transformed into sensual lines and motifs. Her art became almost exclusively abstract.
From Italy, Dawson travelled to
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
early in 1960. At the Dutch
Tachiste
__NOTOC__
Tachisme (alternative spelling: Tachism, derived from the French word ''tache'', stain) is a French style of abstract painting popular in the 1940s and 1950s. The term is said to have been first used with regards to the movement in 19 ...
Nono Reinhold's Atelier Patris
that ran 1957–61 at 26 rue Boulard, where she was the only woman amongst five printers,
[''The Age'' Friday 25 Nov 1960, p.13] she worked printing for
School of Paris
The School of Paris (french: École de Paris) refers to the French and émigré artists who worked in Paris in the first half of the 20th century.
The School of Paris was not a single art movement or institution, but refers to the importance ...
artists in Paris, proof printing lithographs by artists
Pierre Soulages
Pierre Jean Louis Germain Soulages (; 24 December 1919 – 26 October 2022) was a French painter, printmaker, and sculptor. In 2014, President François Hollande of France described him as "the world's greatest living artist." His works are hel ...
,
Fritz Hundertwasser and
Kumi Sugai
was a Japanese painter and printmaker. Driven by an interest in avant-garde painting, Sugai moved to Paris in 1952 where he quickly attracted critical attention, participating in numerous exhibitions in Paris and abroad. First working in a style ...
and others, and translated her Italian drawings into lithographs with bold colours, lines and strokes
The five lithographs she made at the Atelier Patris in Paris during 1960 are in the collections of the NGV, the AGNSW and the NGA.
Dawson returned to Melbourne in late 1960.
Gallery A
Returning after nearly four years to Australia in late November 1960
Rather than any of the range of fine art galleries in Melbourne,
Dawson chose Gallery A, a design and furniture retail space that included an art gallery in Flinders St. for her first solo show
[Arnold Shore, ''The Age'' Tuesday 28 Feb 1961, p2]['Geometrical', The Age Monday 15 May 1961, p.2] opening 18 May 1961, then was employed by the gallery with responsibilities that included collaborating with dealer Max Hutchinson and furniture designer and sculptor,
Clement Meadmore
Clement Meadmore (9 February 1929 – 19 April 2005) was an Australian-American sculptor known for massive outdoor steel sculptures.
Biography
Born Clement Lyon Meadmore in Melbourne, Australia in 1929, Clement Meadmore studied aeronautical ...
on the gallery's major 1961 exhibition ''The Bauhaus: Aspects and Influence.''
Dawson also founded the
Gallery A
Gallery A was a mid-century Australian gallery that exhibited contemporary Australian art. It was established in 1959 at 60 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, and then relocated to 275 Toorak Road., South Yarra. A second Gallery A venue was opened and run ...
Print Workshop,
working at the studio as a lithographic proof printer for visiting artists,
described by
James Gleeson
James Timothy Gleeson (21 November 1915 – 20 October 2008) was an Australian artist. He served on the board of the National Gallery of Australia.
Early life
Gleeson was born in the Sydney district of Hornsby in 1915 and attended East Sydn ...
as 'pioneering' Australian graphic arts. In this role she introduced Australian artists including
John Brack
John Brack (10 May 1920 – 11 February 1999) was an Australian painter, and a member of the Antipodeans group. According to one critic, Brack's early works captured the idiosyncrasies of their time "more powerfully and succinctly than any Aust ...
,
John Olsen
John Wayne Olsen, AO (born 7 June 1945) is a former Australian politician, diplomat and football commissioner. He was Premier of South Australia between 28 November 1996 and 22 October 2001. He is now President of the Federal Liberal Party, C ...
and
Fred Williams to
lithography
Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...
. Among her students were Graeme Cohen, Richard Havyatt and Winston Thomas.
Also in 1961, in November she issued a call amongst Australian printmakers for works, 10 of which were to be chosen to represent the country in ''Prints of the World'' being organised by collector and curator
Robert Erskine
Robert Erskine (1735–1780) was a Scottish inventor and engineer who came to the British colonial Province of New Jersey in 1771 to run the ironworks at Ringwood, New Jersey. He subsequently became sympathetic to the movement for independen ...
in London. A special September 1963 edition of ''
Meanjin
''Meanjin'' (), formerly ''Meanjin Papers'' and ''Meanjin Quarterly'', is an Australian literary magazine. The name is derived from the Turrbal word for the spike of land where the city of Brisbane is located. It was founded in 1940 in Brisbane ...
'' devoted to French writing featured her work on its cover and as illustrations throughout.
Working as the gallery manager and technical assistant, Dawson's abstraction developed through her adoption of acrylic paint and shaped composition boards. Related to, and influential on her art, was her design of furniture for the gallery, one item of which is in the Queensland Art Gallery Collection from her ‘Living Art’ table top series of 1964 made at the invitation of the Australian Laminex company and fabricated by Steven Davis in Melbourne.
Angela Goddard describes Dawson's tables as;
Having shown prints and drawings at Gallery A, she held her first painting solo there in 1964.
Colour field painting
Robert Lindsay notes that; "It was through a group of artists returning to Australia in the early and mid 1960s that the new international style became established. Janet Dawson returned in 1961, Dick Watkins in 1962,
Sydney Ball from New York in 1965, and also in 1965
Tony McGillick..."
Artists from this group, including Dawson, were represented 21 August–28 September 1968 in
''The Field'', the exhibition inaugurating the new venue of the NGV on
St. Kilda Road Melbourne. Curators of the exhibition John Stringer, Exhibitions Officer, and
Brian Finemore, Curator of Australian Art selected two works by Dawson. One of only three women invited, beside
Wendy Paramour and
Normana Wright, she showed her large-scale recent works; ''Wall 11'', 1968–69, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 184.3 x 184.4 cm., which was soon purchased by the National Gallery of Australia in 1969; and ''Rollascape 2'', 1968, synthetic polymer paint on an irregularly-shaped composition board, 150.0 x 275.0 cm. The latter was purchased by the
Art Gallery of Ballarat
The Art Gallery of Ballarat is the oldest and largest regional art gallery in Australia. Established in 1884 as the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery by the citizens of Ballarat, both the building and part of its collection is listed on the Victorian H ...
with assistance of the Visual Arts/Craft Board of the
Australia Council
The Australia Council for the Arts, commonly known as the Australia Council, is the country's official arts council, serving as an arts funding and advisory body for the Government of Australia. The council was announced in 1967 as the Austr ...
, in 1988.
During the 1970s Dawson moved away from such
Hard Edge abstraction to a more 'painterly' style, but maintained her formal vocabulary; at the time of her 1979 survey show
Mary Eagle noted "she sees everything in nature blending, flowing together..."
Style and reception
James Gleeson
James Timothy Gleeson (21 November 1915 – 20 October 2008) was an Australian artist. He served on the board of the National Gallery of Australia.
Early life
Gleeson was born in the Sydney district of Hornsby in 1915 and attended East Sydn ...
, comparing works of Dawson,
Rapotec and
Coburn in a group show at Hungry Horse Gallery in August 1964, notes "the serenity of spirit that lies behind the vivacious conversation of Janet Dawson’s colours," and goes on to predict that;
Dawson was involved in the
Colour Field movement; abstraction that used flat, solid and graduated hues to make colour its own subject. Art historian
Bernard Smith writes that "Colour painting first began to appear rather hesitantly upon the Australian scene around 1963. Two artists are of special importance for its appearance, Dick Watkins in Sydney and Janet Dawson in Melbourne."
She was among the artists exhibited in ''
The Field'' at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1968. The exhibition opened too much controversy, but launched the careers of many of the young artists. Dawson was one of only three women artists in the exhibition,
(re-staged in 2018).
Donald Brook
Donald Brook (8 January 1927 – 17 December 2018) was an Australian artist, art critic, philosopher, and theorist, whose research and publications centre on the philosophy of art, non-verbal representation and cultural evolution. He initiated ...
, in year of ''The Field,'' reviewed a May exhibition ''Paintings by Janet Dawson'' at Gallery A, and described her approach at the time to the painting as an object;
In 1970 Brook expands on this assessment:
Mary Eagle identifies in Dawson's early painting "themes of architectural and atmospheric space and light and images of clouds, moons and rainbows" that continue into her abstract work.
Of Dawson's winning the Archibald Prize which marks a point in her career of departure from pure abstraction, art historian
Patrick McCaughey
Patrick McCaughey (born 1942) is an Irish-born Australian art historian and academic.
McCaughey was born in Belfast, his father being Davis McCaughey. He migrated with his family to Melbourne, Australia. when he was ten years old. His secondary ...
praised the "loose painterly treatment of figure and supports" and considered her success "surprising and deserving" because "Miss Dawson is better known as a sophisticated abstract painter. To find her venturing into the staid area of the Archibald and then carrying all before her is a marvellous reversal of the expected..."
Remarking on work Dawson produced after moving to country Binalong, Daniel Thomas in a 1974 review declared her "one of Australia's very best artists", but "now 'modern' only in the sense that she knows all about colour and form and surface; she can clamp forms to the edge of her canvas, secure in the knowledge that all is masterfully under control." He considers the show evidence of "her perhaps reluctant return to the 'old-fashioned'. The exhibition is not only about pink and yellow singing together...It is also about agriculture and being cold, and needing rain, and about how the gum trees at the bottom of the paddock are primeval, grey, hairy monsters. If anyone does an exhibition of gum-tree painting, Janet Dawson now has to be included, along with
Lister Lister,
Hans Heysen and
Sidney Nolan." In an August 1977 Gallery A show she augmented such imagery, though on a macro scale, without the gum trees, with collage, as
Nancy Borlase
Nancy Wilmot Borlase (24 March 1914 – 11 September 2006) was a New Zealand-born Australian artist, known for her landscape-based abstract paintings and portraits, and as an art critic and commentator. Her work is displayed in the National Gal ...
notes in her review;
Gary Catalano
Gary Catalano (30 October 1947 – 8 December 2002) was an Australian poet and art critic.
Life
Calatano was born on 30 October 1947 in Brisbane. He married writer Helen Hewitt in 1990. He died on 8 December 2002 in Melbourne.
Awards
* 1992 Gra ...
writing in 1988 about her solo show in
Richmond
Richmond most often refers to:
* Richmond, Virginia, the capital of Virginia, United States
* Richmond, London, a part of London
* Richmond, North Yorkshire, a town in England
* Richmond, British Columbia, a city in Canada
* Richmond, California, ...
, questions, then reluctantly concurs with, Eagle's comparison of Dawson's
metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
with
Blake
Blake is a surname which originated from Old English. Its derivation is uncertain; it could come from "blac", a nickname for someone who had dark hair or skin, or from "blaac", a nickname for someone with pale hair or skin. Another theory, presuma ...
's, and highlights the artist's surrealism:
Catalano's 1997 interview with the artist allowed Dawson to give her own response to the question of metaphysics:
On the occasion of Dawson's 1996 drawing survey at the National Gallery of Australia, John McDonald of ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' remarked that the exhibition was;
Considering later work McDonald remarks that;
Partnership
In 1968 Dawson married
Michael Boddy
Michael Boddy (8 March 193413 April 2014) was an English-Australian actor and writer. His best known works include co-writing the play ''The Legend of King O'Malley'' with Bob Ellis.
Personal
Boddy was born in the village of Baldersby, Yorkshire ...
(1934–2016), a British-born playwright and actor, educated at
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...
, who migrated to Australia in 1960 and whom she met in 1963 in Melbourne while she was designing for the
Emerald Hill Theatre
The Emerald Hill Theatre was a theatre company and venue in Melbourne, Australia, which operated from 1962 to 1966. The 140-seat Emerald Hill Theatre was at 250 Dorcas St, South Melbourne, in a former church converted by architect Robin Boyd.
It ...
and on the set of his play ''You'll Come to Love Your Sperm Test''.
['The artistic life is a full-time job,' ''The Sydney Morning Herald'', Monday, 8 Jan 1973 p.13] At that time she was working 1969–1971 full-time in the display department of the
Australian Museum
The Australian Museum is a heritage-listed museum at 1 William Street, Sydney central business district, New South Wales, Australia. It is the oldest museum in Australia,Design 5, 2016, p.1 and the fifth oldest natural history museum in the ...
, Sydney, which she credits, because of the 'natural history' to which it exposed her, as an influence on her painting.
In 1973 she produced sets for productions of Boddy's plays ''The Legend of King O'Malley'' and ''Cash'', illustrations for a collection of essays on O'Malley and Boddy's "The Last Supper Show" at the Nimrod Theatre where he was playwright-in-residence.
They partnered in a program in schools on the production and staging of plays before moving from
Waverley Waverley may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* ''Waverley'' (novel), by Sir Walter Scott
** ''Waverley'' Overture, a work by Hector Berlioz inspired by Scott's novel
* Waverley Harrison, a character in the New Zealand soap opera ''Shortland Stree ...
to the village of
Binalong, New South Wales
Binalong (Bine-a-long) is a village in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia, 37 km north-west of Yass in Yass Valley Shire. At the , Binalong and the surrounding area had a population of 543.
History
Original inhabit ...
,
and with a paining of her husband surrounded by gardening implements Dawson became the third woman to win the
Archibald Prize
The Archibald Prize is an Australian portraiture art prize for painting, generally seen as the most prestigious portrait prize in Australia. It was first awarded in 1921 after the receipt of a bequest from J. F. Archibald, the editor ...
for her ''Michael Boddy Reading,
['Informal study: Archibald Prize to woman,' ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' Saturday, 19 Jan 1974, p.5]'' her first and only entry in the Prize.
In 1977 they lived at 'Scribble Rock', a small property just outside the settlement, and there, from 22 December 1994 to May 1995 she produced the ''Scribble Rock Red Cabbage'' series purchased in its entirety by the National Gallery of Australia.
In 1981 Dawson and her husband relocated to
Canberra to help establish Theatre ACT, returning to Binalong in 1985.
That year, the
Australia Council
The Australia Council for the Arts, commonly known as the Australia Council, is the country's official arts council, serving as an arts funding and advisory body for the Government of Australia. The council was announced in 1967 as the Austr ...
awarded Dawson the A$19,250 full standard artist's grant.
Boddy died in 2016 and Dawson moved to
Ocean Grove, Victoria
Ocean Grove is a seaside town in Victoria, Australia, located on the Bellarine Peninsula. At the 2016 census, Ocean Grove had a population of 14,165.
History
In 1869, American Methodists established a permanent religious camp community on the ...
. Michael had three children, including a son who pre-deceased Boddy.
Exhibitions
* 1961: solo show, paintings, lithographs, drawings, Gallery A, Melbourne.
* 1963: ''Prints '63, Studio One Printmakers.'' Skinner Galleries (1963 – 1963); Newcastle Region Art Gallery (1 September 1963 – 1 September 1963);
Castlemaine Art Gallery And Historical Museum (1 September 1963 – 1 September 1963); Rudy Komon Art Gallery (1 September 1963 – 1 September 1963); Douglas Gallery (1 September 1963 – 1 September 1963); National Gallery Of Victoria (11 September 1963 – 6 October 1963); Bonython Art Gallery, Adelaide (1 October 1963 – 1 October 1963); Yosheido Gallery, Tokyo (1964 – 1964)
* 1964, August: group show, Hungry Horse Gallery, Sydney
* 1965: ''Introduction '65'', Janet Dawson, Leonard Hessing,
Robert Klippel
Robert Klippel AO (19 June 192019 June 2001) was an Australian constructivist sculptor and teacher. He is often described in contemporary art literature as Australia's greatest sculptor. Throughout his career he produced some 1,300 pieces of ...
, Colin Lanceley,
John Olsen
John Wayne Olsen, AO (born 7 June 1945) is a former Australian politician, diplomat and football commissioner. He was Premier of South Australia between 28 November 1996 and 22 October 2001. He is now President of the Federal Liberal Party, C ...
, Charles Reddington.
Gallery A
Gallery A was a mid-century Australian gallery that exhibited contemporary Australian art. It was established in 1959 at 60 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, and then relocated to 275 Toorak Road., South Yarra. A second Gallery A venue was opened and run ...
, Melbourne
* 1966: included in an exhibition of contemporary Australian painting in
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...
and
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...
* 1966/7: ''Gallery A. Summer exhibition 66'', Australian paintings drawings watercolours sculpture. Artists exhibiting were
Sydney Ball, Jennifer Barwell, Henry Bastin,
Charles Blackman,
Arthur Boyd
Arthur Merric Bloomfield Boyd (24 July 1920 – 24 April 1999) was a leading Australian painter of the middle to late 20th century. Boyd's work ranges from impressionist renderings of Australian landscape to starkly expressionist figuration, ...
,
John Brack
John Brack (10 May 1920 – 11 February 1999) was an Australian painter, and a member of the Antipodeans group. According to one critic, Brack's early works captured the idiosyncrasies of their time "more powerfully and succinctly than any Aust ...
, Donald Brook, Mike Brown,
Judy Cassab, Peter Clarke,
John Coburn, Martin Collocott, Jack Courier,
Ray Crooke
Ray Austin Crooke (12 July 19225 December 2015) was an Australian artist known for his landscapes. He won the Archibald Prize in 1969 with a portrait of George Johnston.
Early life
Ray Crooke was born in Auburn, Victoria in 1922. He spent time ...
,
Robert Dickerson,
Russell Drysdale, Peggy Fauser, Maximilian Feuerring, John Firth-Smith,
William Frater
William Frater (1890–1974) was a Scottish-born Australian stained-glass designer and modernist painter who challenged conservative tastes in Australian art.
Early life and education
Scotland
William Frater was born on 31 January 1890 a ...
, Peter Freeman,
Leonard French
Leonard William French OBE (8 October 1928 – 10 January 2017) was an Australian artist, known principally for major stained glass works.
French was born in Brunswick, Victoria to a family of Cornish origin. His stained glass creation ...
,
Donald Friend
Donald Stuart Leslie Friend (6 February 1915 – 16 August 1989) was an Australian artist and diarist who lived much of his life overseas. He has been the subject of controversy since the posthumous publication of diaries in which he wrote of sex ...
, Marjorie Gillespie,
James Gleeson
James Timothy Gleeson (21 November 1915 – 20 October 2008) was an Australian artist. He served on the board of the National Gallery of Australia.
Early life
Gleeson was born in the Sydney district of Hornsby in 1915 and attended East Sydn ...
, Thomas Gleghorn, Anne Hall,
Pro Hart
Kevin Charles "Pro" Hart, MBE (30 May 192828 March 2006), was an Australian artist, born in Broken Hill, New South Wales, who was considered the father of the Australian Outback painting movement and his works are widely admired for capturi ...
,
Elaine Haxton, John Henshaw, Daryl Hill, Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack, Leonard Hessing, Perle Hessing, Robert Hughes, Robert Klippel, Michael Kmit, Colin Lanceley, Richard Larter, Francis Lymburner, Elwyn Lynn,
Mary MacQueen
Mary McCartney Macqueen (29 January 1912 – 15 September 1994) was an Australian artist who was known for her drawing, printmaking and mixed media works on paper. Her artistic style was expressive, gestural and experimental.
Life, training ...
, Marsha Morgan,
Sydney Nolan, Alan Oldfield,
John Olsen
John Wayne Olsen, AO (born 7 June 1945) is a former Australian politician, diplomat and football commissioner. He was Premier of South Australia between 28 November 1996 and 22 October 2001. He is now President of the Federal Liberal Party, C ...
,
Stan Ostoja-Kotkowski, William Peascod,
John Perceval
John de Burgh Perceval AO (1 February 1923 – 15 October 2000) was a well-known Australian artist. Perceval was the last surviving member of a group known as the Angry Penguins who redefined Australian art in the 1940s. Other members include ...
, Carl Plate, Peter Powditch,
Clifton Pugh
Clifton Ernest Pugh AO, (17 December 1924 – 14 October 1990) was an Australian artist and three-time winner of Australia's Archibald Prize. One of Australia's most renowned and successful painters, Pugh was strongly influenced by German Expr ...
, Emanuel Raft, Stanislaus Rapotec, Charles Reddington, Stephen Reed, John Rigby, Jan Riske, William Rose,
Rosemary Ryan,
Gareth Sansom
Gareth Sansom (born 19 November 1939) is an Australian artist, painter, printmaker and collagist and winner of the 2008 John McCaughey Memorial Prize of $100,000.
Best known for introducing new themes and subject-matter into Australian art ...
, Michael Shannon, Imre Szigeti, Michael Taylor, Stan De Teliga, Peter Upward, David Warren,
Guy Warren
Guy Warren of Ghana, also known as Kofi Ghanaba (4 May 1923 – 22 December 2008), was a Ghanaian musician, best known as the inventor of Afro-jazz — "the reuniting of African-American jazz with its African roots" — and as a member of The T ...
, Richard Weight, Robert Williams, Les Willis, Ken Whisson, Peter Wright. Shown in both Melbourne and Sydney branches of Gallery A and continued until 24 February 1967
* 1968:''The Field'' exhibition. Two paintings included amongst 74 abstract works by 40 artists working in hard edge abstraction, colour field painting, using shaped canvases, and conceptual art.
National Gallery of Victoria
The National Gallery of Victoria, popularly known as the NGV, is an art museum in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is Australia's oldest and most visited art museum.
The NGV houses an encyclopedic art collection across two ...
* 1979: survey exhibition, National Gallery of Victoria
[Mary Eagle, 'Paintings of private eccentric,' ''The Age'', Saturday 14 Jul 1979, p.19]
* 1988, Feb-Mar: solo show, 312 Lennox St., Richmond
* 1996, 22 June–11 August: ''The Drawings of Janet Dawson;'' survey show, National Gallery of Australia
[John McDonald, 'Country pleasures,' The Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday 10 Aug 1996, p.149]
*1998–2019: Six solo shows at Stella Downer Fine Art, Sydney
* 2000: Challenge and Response in Australian Art, 1955–65, National Gallery of Australia 2002 Intimate Portraits, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra
* 2002–2019: Ten group shows at Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne
* 2006: Survey Exhibition, Bathurst Gallery, NSW; S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney; University of Queensland Art Museum; Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery; Mornington Peninsula Regional Art Gallery, Vic.
* 2007–2019: Group shows at Stella Downer Fine Art, Sydney
* 2008: ''Modern Times'', Powerhouse Museum, Sydney
* 2012: ''Janet Dawson: A Personal View'', Goulburn Regional Art Gallery, NSW
* 2015/19: Two solo shows at Nancy Sever Gallery, Canberra
* 2017: ''Abstraction: Celebrating Australian Women Abstract Artists'', Geelong Art Gallery, Vic. and travelling
* 2018: ''The Field Revisited'', National Gallery of Victoria
* 2019: ''Trying to find comfort in an uncomfortable chair - Paintings from the Cruthers Collection of Australian Women’s Art'', University of Western Australia, Perth
* 2019: ''Cloud Comics,'' Nancy Sever Gallery,
Canberra
* 2020: ''Know My Name'' featuring 150 female Australian artists from 1900 to the 21st century, National Gallery of Australia
Awards and recognition
* 1956: National Gallery of Victoria Travelling Scholarship
* 1959: Boise Scholarship
* 1973:
Archibald Prize
The Archibald Prize is an Australian portraiture art prize for painting, generally seen as the most prestigious portrait prize in Australia. It was first awarded in 1921 after the receipt of a bequest from J. F. Archibald, the editor ...
* 1977:
MBE Mbe may refer to:
* Mbé, a town in the Republic of the Congo
* Mbe Mountains Community Forest, in Nigeria
* Mbe language, a language of Nigeria
* Mbe' language, language of Cameroon
* ''mbe'', ISO 639 code for the extinct Molala language
Molal ...
for service to art
* 1985:
Australia Council for the Arts grant
Collections
* Royal Society, London
* Art Gallery of New South Wales
* National Gallery of Australia
* National Gallery of Victoria
* Art Gallery of South Australia
References
Further reading
* Deborah Clark, ''The Drawings of Janet Dawson, 1956 to the Present'', exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Australia, 1996.
* Gary Catalano, ‘A Natural History (Interview)’, ''Art & Australia'', Vol. 34, No. 3, 1997, p. 332-341 and illus. cover.
* Andrew Sayers, ''Intimate Portraits'', exhibition catalogue, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, 2002.
* Daniel Thomas, ‘Golden Oldies’, ''Art & Australia'', Vol. 50, No. 4, 2013, p. 582–589.
External links
Artcyclopedia
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dawson, Janet
Archibald Prize winners
1935 births
Living people
Australian women painters
20th-century Australian women artists
20th-century Australian artists
21st-century Australian women artists
21st-century Australian artists
Australian designers
Australian lithographers
Australian printmakers
Theatre designers
Abstract painters
Artists from Sydney
Australian Members of the Order of the British Empire
Women lithographers
National Gallery of Victoria Art School alumni