THORNHILL, DOROTHY (1910-1987)

“Nude Study” (c.1970)
Pencil on paper
35 x 22cm
Signed lower left
*exhibited at Macquarie Galleries, 1974
*estate of the late Douglas Dundas
 
Thornhill was a pioneering, respected British-born Australian Modernist. She studied at the Elam Art School in New Zealand, and then the National Art School at East Sydney Technical College under future husband, Douglas Dundas in 1929-32, also becoming a teacher. Thornhill’s forceful and vigorous representations of women bear a striking similarity to those by contemporaries Tamara de Lempicka and Lucien Freud. Thornhill had begun exhibiting with the Society of Artists in 1929 and her works are represented in most National Gallery collections, especially the Art Gallery Of NSW.