TOOVEY, DORA (1898-1986)

**PRICE ON APPLICATION**
 
"His Royal Highness - Little Boy Blue" (1945)
oil on canvas
75 x 62cm
signed lower right
*exhibited at Royal Art Society, 1945 (no.131)
*Fielders General Products Collection, Tamworth
*private collection, Sydney
.
Toovey was a celebrated Australian painter & portraitist. She trained in Sydney under Antonio Dattilo-Rubbo, James R Jackson (whom she married) and John Passmore. She painted portraits from 1924; during three years' travel studies from 1926 she attended the Académie Julian in Paris, and spent some time under Augustus John in the south of France. A long-term resident of Mosman, Toovey frequently exhibited landscapes in the Wynne Prize, and she was an Archibald finalist thirty-four times though she never won the Prize. She won the Portia Geach Memorial Award in 1970 with a self-portrait in a landscape, and 1978 with a portrait of Neville Bonner. Her works are represented in several major collections, including the AGNSW & National Portrait Gallery.
 
The sitter was Prince William of Gloucester, first cousin of Queen Elizabeth II. His father, Prince Henry of Gloucester, third son of King George V & Queen Mary, was Governor-General of Australia between 1945-47, the only Prince to hold the post.