ISHERWOOD, JEAN (1911-2006)

“Portrait Of A Young Woman” (c.1960)
Oil on canvas
50 x 40cm
Signed lower left
*private collection, Sydney
 
Isherwood OAM FRAS was an underrated, award-winning Australian Modernist. She studied at East Sydney Technical College and took RAS classes with Dattilo Rubbo. Influenced by prevailing modernist movements of the 1930s, she exhibited first in 1934 with the Australian Watercolour Institute, of which she became a member in 1947. Between 1950 and 1980 she won 19 prizes for watercolours and 37 for oil paintings, and she taught at ESTC from 1961 to 1974. She married the arts administrator John Dabron in 1940, and they lived in Springwood until they separated in 1948. Between 1942 and 1974 she entered the Archibald competition nine times; amongst her subjects were John Coburn (1966) and Lloyd Rees (1964), and her last entry was a self-portrait (1974). Her portrait of Marjorie Cotton was exhibited in First Ladies: Significant Australian Women 1913-2013 at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. Her work is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; the Art Gallery of NSW; the Howard Hinton Collection, Armidale Regional Gallery; the Tamworth Art Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra and many other regional galleries and private collections. In 1994 Jean Isherwood was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for her contribution to the Arts.