JOHNSTONE, DOROTHY (1892-1980)

"James At 15 Months" (1946) 
Oil on canvas
cm
Signed lower right
*exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in April-August 1946
*private collection, Sydney
 
Dorothy Johnstone ARSA was an important Scottish Queer Portraitist. Graduating in 1912, Johnstone was the star student at Edinburgh College of Art. She took the Life Class with Ernest Stephen Lumsden where she revealed her talents at informal portraiture, a genre for which she became well known. In 1914 she became a member of staff at the Edinburgh College of Art. From the summer of 1915, she became a regular annual visitor to Kirkcudbright in Galloway, where she would paint with other mainly female artists including Jessie M. King as part of the Kirkcudbright School. Johnstone, with her close friends Cecile Walton and Mary Newbery, was a member of The Edinburgh School, which reformed in 1919, a collective of gifted and progressive artists associated with the Edinburgh College of Art. During 1919 she was living in Kirkcudbright where she had an affair with Vera Holme who would go on to be the 'Pankhursts' chauffeur'. In 1924, at the peak of her artistic career, Johnstone mounted a joint exhibition in Edinburgh with fellow artist Cecile Walton. After moving to Aberdeen, she kept her links with Edinburgh by continuing to exhibit her portraits & landscapes at the Royal Scottish Academy, to which she was elected an Associate (ARSA) in 1962. Johnstone painted landscapes & portraits, particularly of children, & her style was free & relaxed, whether using oil, watercolour, pencil or chalk. Some of her work is displayed at the National Gallery of Scotland & Royal Scottish Academy. This beautiful portrait was exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in April-August 1946!!