§ DOROTHY JOHNSTONE A.R.S.A (SCOTTISH 1892-1980) THE BLACK HAT Signed and dated 1913, oil on canvas

(67cm x 75cm (26.25in x 29.5in))

This is a rare and significant work by Dorothy Johnstone. Having been one of the first students at the newly-established Edinburgh College of Art (ECA), Johnstone began exhibiting at the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) in 1912, followed by the Royal Glasgow Institute in 1913 and at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1915. She focussed on figure painting, often on a sizeable scale and with sitters presented against a muted, plain background. In recognition of her readily-achieved professional standing and due to the mobilisation of male staff following the outbreak of World War One, Johnstone began teaching at ECA in 1914. The studio facilities she enjoyed there, plus the stimulus provided by her students meant that her work developed apace. She spent most summers between 1915 and 1924 in Kirkcudbright, often staying in one of Jessie M. King's cottages, and became a key figure in the town's art circles. Meanwhile, in 1919 Johnstone joined the re-convened exhibiting society, the Edinburgh Group, whose members included Cecile Walton, Eric Robertson and David Macbeth Sutherland. A joint exhibition with Walton in 1924 led to the artists being described as 'two brilliant daughters of Scotland' (Jessica Walker Stephens, 'Cecile Walton and Dorothy Johnstone', The Studio, Vol. 79, 1924, p. 80 quoted in ed. Alice Strang, Modern Scottish Women: Painters and Sculptors 1885-1965, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2015, p. 60). However, Johnstone's wedding to her ECA colleague Sutherland that year meant she had to resign her from her job, as the 'Marriage Bar' legislation prevented married women from holding full-time teaching positions. With the birth of her children and her husband's appointment as Head of Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen, Johnstone's career lost momentum. She continued to paint as domestic responsibilites permitted and was elected an Associate Member of the RSA in 1962. Her death in 1980 was marked by a Memorial Exhibition mounted at Aberdeen Art Gallery in 1983.