Dorothy Stoner was the middle child of Lewis Edward Stoner and Catherine Stoner (nee Tocque. She was born on 28 November 1904 near Crowborough, Sussex in England. The family emigrated to Canada in 1905. Initially they lived in Saskatchewan but soon settled on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. In 1920 they moved to New Zealand before settling in Tasmania in 1921. At first they lived in Huonville but then settled in Hobart.
Her mother, who became one of her constant subjects, always encouraged her to draw and in 1925 she enrolled in art classes at Hobart Technical College where she studied under Lucien Dechaineux and Mildred Lovett. Her talent was recognised early as she was exempted from fees in second term 1925 and was granted a scholarship in 1926. She first exhibited with the Tasmanian Art Society in 1929. By the mid-1930s she was sharing a Hobart studio with Lovett, Edith Holmes, Ethel Nicholls and Florence Rodway.
She taught from 1936 to 1939 at the Launceston Technical College, but teaching was always secondary to her career as an artist. In 1939 she travelled across the Bass Strait to study at both the George Bell School and Melbourne Technical College. Bell encouraged her to move away from a realistic approach and make more imaginative works.
In 1940 she was appointed an art instructor at Hobart Technical College, where she remained until her retirement in 1964, often clashing with the dominant personality of the head teacher, Jack Carington Smith. In 1949 as the world recovered from a second war she travelled to Europe where she studied at the Anglo-French Centre at St Johns Wood in London and also in Paris at the Academie Chaumier and the Atelier Croquois. This experience increased her appreciation of the 'school of Paris’ works by Picasso, Matisse, Marchand, Andre Lhote and Yves Brayer. Her mature works show a greater appreciation of both intensive colour and the abstract qualities of the nude.
In 1961, some years after she returned to Tasmania, she undertook further short term studies at East Sydney Technical College, working with John Passmore, Dorothy Thornhill and Godfrey Miller. In 1966 she spent time working in John Ogburn’s studio school, also in Sydney. She continued to work until her extreme old age, and (with Edith Holmes) was honoured with a retrospective exhibition at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in 1983
- Writers:
-
Joanna Mendelssohn
duggim
- Date written:
- 2013
- Last updated:
- 2013
