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Dorothy Mary Braund:Draft
Dorothy Braund (1926 - 2013) was an Australian Post-war Figuration and Contemporary artist and critic, whose practice included painting, printmaking and teaching. Braund’s extensive career was instrumental in contributing to the Modernist art scene, along with a generation of significant women artists including: Mary MacQueen, Barbara Brash, Anne Marie Graham, Constance Stokes, Anne Montgomery and Nancy Grant. Her first solo exhibition held in 1952 at Peter Bray Gallery in Melbourne instigated her career and from then on she had consistent shows and exhibitions.

Biography
Dorothy Braund was born in Melbourne in the suburb of Malvern on the 15th of November 1926, and studied at St Margaret’s School from 1933 to 1940 and Lauriston Girls’ School in Malvern from 1941 to 1943. Louise Fairley, a family friend, recommended that Braund attend George Bell in 1943 to study art. However, George Bell believed it was more suitable that she enrolled at the National Gallery School as she was so young.

Instead, she began studies at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology In 1944. In the following year Braund studied at the National Gallery School under the instructors William Dargie, Alan Sumner and Murray Griffin from 1945 to 1949. Whilst here she won prizes for drawing and still-life painting, and her efforts enabled her to be chosen by Alana Sumner who set Braund and other students to the George Bell School for extra study, which proved a major influence in her work. Braund also studied in England from 1950-51.

Braund’s residence has changed multiple times over the years, she has lived in Asia, India, the Mediterranean, Greece, England and Australia.

Involvements
While studying at the National Gallery School, Braund and another student named Judy Hunter exhibited modernist works in 1943 with the Contemporary Art Society (CAS). However, CAS confronted them as they were reported in Truth, that they had entered the works as a joke, resulting in a threat of eviction. Braund apologised and continued to exhibit with CAS, whereas Hunter refused to apologise and employed lawyers to help deal with the situation.

In 1950 Braund along with 20 painters, including Alan Sumner, George Bell, William Frater, Roger Kemp, Arthur Boyd and others, participated in a group show at the Stanley Coe Gallery. In 1952, Braund was a part of the Contemporary Art Society where she became a regular 'Thursday night’ participant in 1954. She was a supporter of Bell’s teaching ideas at the George Bell studio until Bell’s death in 1966. George Bell appreciated her ability to use form, colour and surface to create good pictorial design. Her work was also exhibited in Classical Modernism, The George Bell Circle NGV in 1992.

Teaching: Braund taught art at three Melbourne schools in the 1950s. From 1952 she taught for two mornings each week in her hometown Malvern at Lauriston Girls’ School, where she attended when she was young. During 1955, she was selected as ‘Art Mistress’ at St Catherine’s School in Malvern. She also gave talks on ABC Radio in 1961-64, and reviewed children’s books for The Australian newspaper in 1969-77.

Travels: She travelled internationally in the in the 1950s and 60s, often with fellow Australian artists such as Guelda Pyke, which took her across Europe in 1950-51, Greece in 1958, as well as Italy, Pakistan, Persia, Turkey, India and Asia. In 1961 she left Melbourne with Guelda Pyke for Greece where they travelled on a freighter and took a Kombi van on board and drove from Karachi through to Pakistan, Iran and Turkey. In 1962 she returned to Australia. The sights and experiences during her journeys greatly inspired her works.

Art Practice: Braund aims to achieve ultimate simplicity in her work which is flat, carefully designed and small scaled. She works in oil, gouache or watercolour using colours of black, white, brown, grey and other tertiary colours with neutral backgrounds. Many of the themes in Braund’s work draw on familiar everyday experiences and social activities such as public rituals of the Australian beach. Her work is either playful or gently satirical. Braunds artworks often illustrate scenes of intimate lovers, parents with children, relationships between individuals and groups expressed through articulations of form and shape of the human body. Braund’s work focuses on form and design as the main expression, and is characterized by rhythmic line tension, close colour harmony, and reduction of the object. Her later work became more angular and abstract in the treatment of figures during the mid-1960s.

Simultaneously as Joy Hester, Braund worked in Melbourne in her Malvern studio and produced many images of women during her career. She painted a portrait of Barbara Brash in 1967 for the Portia Geach Memorial Award, a prize for women’s portraiture. The painting was completed from familiarity with and drawings of her subject, whose life and practice connected personally with her own.

Reception & Auctions of Artwork Braund explains her position in the artworld, ‘Instead of feeling victimised by being a woman artist,’ Braund stated in 1979 that she was glad that 'the collectors aren’t interested because it means that people buy my paintings because they like them, not because they are good investments.’ In 1992, author Christopher Heathcote stated that many artists such as Braund have been 'unjustly neglected,’ although they came to maturity in the 1950s.

Braund's work has been offered at auction multiple times, with realized prices ranging from $214 USD to $20,935 USD, depending on the size and medium of the artwork. On the 14th and 15th of August 1994, The Art Class 1960 and Bathers, Sandringham 1979, were auctioned at Christie’s Sydney. Braund states in 1994, “I’ve always been knocked out by simplicity. To me it’s got such impact… far more than anything fussy… because you have to get it right. There’s no chance for accidental effects. If you are simple everything has to relate and work.”

After the artists death in 2013, the record price for this artist at auction since 2007 is $20,935 USD for John and Audrey (1956), sold at Mossgreen Auctions, Melbourne in 2014.

Figure 1 Total number sold	Number with images available 	Highest price	Recent average price Paintings	123	91	A$26,840	A$5,780 Works on Paper	145	112	A$7,700	A$2,057 Prints & Graphics	1	1	A$216	N/A

Exhibitions & Awards: Braund has exhibited extensively in the eastern states and is represented in several public collections including National Gallery of Australia, Art Canberra, Art Gallery of South Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, the Queensland Art Gallery, the Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art at the University of Western Australia, university galleries such as the Monash University Museum of Art, and such regional galleries as Bendigo, Castlemaine, Langwarrin, and Mornington.

The following year after her first solo exhibition, held in 1952 at Peter Bray Gallery in Melbourne, she won first prize in the City of Malvern Arts Festival. Her 1960 solo exhibition at the Argus Gallery was opened by the Greek Consul and included many gouaches that she did whilst travelling to countries such as Greece. Her painting Greek Island was awarded the Albury Art Prize in 1962. Braund’s participation in other competitive exhibitions also resulted in being awarded the Colac Art Prize in 1964, the Bendigo Art Prize in 1966 and the Muswellbrook Prize in 1972. Her exhibitions from the 1980′s on, were largely with Eastgate & Holst Gallery, Melbourne.

List of Exhibitions, Awards & Auctions:

Year	Title	Location 1943	Contemporary Art Society Exhibition	Contemporary Art Society 1953	George Bell Group Exhibition	Peter Bray Gallery 1953	Group Exhibition	Victorian Artist’s Society 1953	Melbourne Contemporary Artists Exhibition (Artists including Roger Kemp, Leonard French, John Brack, Charles Blackman, Michael Shannon, Arthur Boyd, Eric Thake and Alan Warren)	Peter Bray Gallery 1954	Nine Victorian Artists Exhibition	Peter Bray Gallery 1955	George Bell Group Exhibition	Peter Bray Gallery 1955	Melbourne Contemporary Artists 1955 Exhibition	Victorian Artist’s Society 1956	George Bell Group Exhibition	Royal Society of Arts of South Australia, Adelaide 1956	Melbourne Contemporary Artists Exhibition	Victorian Artist’s Society 1957	Eight Melbourne Artists (including Arthur Boyd, John Brack, Clive Stephen, Constance Stokes)	Wellington, New Zealand

1957	Group Exhibition	Brummell’s Gallery 1962	Awarded the Albury Art Prize in competitive exhibition for “Greek Island” painting	Murray Art Museum, Albury 1964	Awarded the Colac Art Prize in competitive exhibition	Colac, Victoria 1966	Awarded the Bendigo Art Prize in competitive exhibition	Bendigo, Victoria 1967	Portia Geach Memorial Award 12 July Exhibition	Department of Education Gallery, Sydney 1970	Group Exhibition	Leveson St Gallery 1972	Awarded the Muswellbrook Prize in competitive exhibition	Muswellbrook, New South Wales 1981	Idea for Paintings Exhibition	Leveson St Gallery 1981	The George Bell School Students, Friends, Influences Exhibition	Deutscher Fine Art, Melbourne, toured Georges Gallery, Melbourne, Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Bendigo Art Gallery, S.H. Ervin Museum and Gallery, Sydney 1988	George Bell Students and Friends Exhibition	Holland Fine Art, Sydney 1989	Group Exhibition	Eastgate Gallery 1992	Classical Modernism: The George Bell Circle Exhibition	National Gallery of Victoria 1993	Important Australian Women Artists Exhibition	Melbourne Fine Art Gallery 1994	“The Art Class” (1960) and “Bathers, Sandringham” (1979) auctioned and sold	Christie’s Australian Art Department, Sydney 2004	Site + Vision: La Trobe University Art Collection Exhibition	Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, Melbourne 2014	“John and Audrey” (1956) auctioned and sold	Mossgreen Auctions, Melbourne