Altough she was born in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in England, Dora L Wilson spent most of her life in Australia, in Melbourne. She studied first at Somerset School and Methodist Ladies College before attending the National Gallery School where she was taught by Bernard Hall and Frederick McCubbin. After seeing Anders Zorn’s etchings in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria she enrolled in John Mather’s etching classes. The quality of her early etchings, as well as those by her fellow student Jessie Traill, led to their work being reproduced in The Lone Hand in 1907. The same year she was awarded
n a silver medal for the best etching at the 1907 First Australian Exhibition of Women’s Work, Melbourne.
After 1910 her Melbourne studio, Temple Court, Collins Street West, became the meeting place for the “Waddy” a group of former gallery school students who exhibited together from 1912.
Her work from this earlier period of pastels and (predominantly) child portraits was chosen for the 1923 exhibition of Australian art that travelled to Burlington House in London.
In the 1920s she became more adventurous, painting the life of the Melbourne streets – the people, the buildings and above all, the accidental effects of light and shade.
In 1927 Baldwin Spencer commissioned her and the photographer Pegg Clarke to travel to Europe and record its landmarks. They often travelled on foot, sometimes sleeping in barns as they recorded both the conventional landmarks and some less conventional.
On her return to Australia she also painted a series of history paintings, a reflection of Australia’s belated interest in its own past. During World War II she exhibited with the Women Painters’ Service Group.
In 1938 she entered the Archibald Prize with portraits of fellow artist Sybil Craig and the writer Alan Marshall.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
James McArdle
- Date written:
- 1996
- Last updated:
- 2021
