Dora Toovey, born in Bathurst, 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. The Art Gallery of New South Wales has a landscape, the 1970 self-portrait, and her portrait of Roy Fluke (1961).
Updated 2018
