Dorothy Richmond

Name
Dorothy Richmond
Date of birth
1861
Place of birth
Auckland (region)/New Zealand
Date of death
1935
Gender
Female
Biography
Dorothy Kate Richmond had a relatively unique upbringing and training for a female artist born in mid nineteenth-century New Zealand as she was afforded the opportunity to study in England and Europe. While she was born in Auckland in 1861, and spent her early years in Nelson and Taranaki, her father James Crowe Richmond – an artist himself – took her and her two older siblings to England and then on to Europe to be educated in 1873. This included two years at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1878 to 1880, where she was “promoted to the ‘Life School’” within six months and achieved the praise of the principal, artist Alphonse Legros. Despite winning a scholarship to the Slade on a second attempt, the family returned to New Zealand in mid-1880.

Richmond had great difficulty settling back into life in New Zealand, subsequently returning to England and Europe for further training from March 1885 to September 1886, and again May 1889 to late that year. Caring for her elderly father over the next decade kept her in New Zealand until his death in 1898. Freed from familial-responsibilities and now financially independent, she returned again around 1900. She travelled extensively, training with Irish watercolourist Norman Garstin associated with the Newlyn School and befriended fellow New Zealand artist, Frances Hodgkins.

Hodgkins and Richmond returned to New Zealand in late December 1903, setting up a studio together in Wellington, going on painting trips and jointly exhibiting. While Hodgkins returned to Europe in 1906, Richmond stayed on in Wellington where she became a key member of the art community. She exhibited at art society exhibitions across the country and continued to teach. She also sought to promote the acquisition of works by her contemporaries, including Hodgkins.