Janet Dawson
Janet Dawson
Quinces with Chillies, 1997
Janet Dawson (born 1935)
oil on canvas
15 x 20 cm (frame: 26 x 31 cm)
signed and dated verso
Frame: original, Andrzej Janczewski, Colour Square, Melbourne
sold
Janet Dawson was born in Sydney. After growing up in Forbes, she moved to Melbourne and studied at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School. Whilst there, she won various Gallery Art School Prizes including the Grace Joel Scholarship, the Hugh Ramsey Portrait Prize, the National Gallery Society Scholarship in 1955 and the National Gallery of Victoria Travelling Scholarship in 1956. Janet used the latter to travel to London and study at the Slade School of Fine Art. In 1959 she won the Slade School lithography prize which included a Boise scholarship that enabled her to travel to Italy where she concentrated on drawing landscapes in abstract. From Italy Dawson went to Paris where she worked as the only woman among five printers at a lithography studio, the Atelier Paris.
Returning to Australia in 1960, Dawson founded and ran the avant-garde print workshop at Gallery A in Melbourne. She became an accomplished lithographic printer of her own works as well as other renowned Australian artists, including Fred Williams, John Brack and Roger Kemp.
Early in her career, Dawson was involved in the Colour Field movement - abstraction that used flat, solid hues to make colour its own subject. She was one of only three women artists who exhibited in The Field at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1968. However, her art traverses many more styles than pure abstraction. In 1973, she won the Archibald Prize for her portrait of her husband, playwright and actor Michael Boddy Reading. In 1977, she was awarded an MBE for services to art. Her work has been the subject of numerous survey exhibitions including the National Gallery of Victoria in 1979, the National Gallery of Australia in 1996, and a nationally touring show in 2006.
Janet’s works are held in Collections across Australia, including the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of South Australia and many regional galleries.