JEAN HOWLETT (1907 - ?)

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 Catherine Jean Howlett was an award-winning Australian Modernist. A widower of a British Lieutenant Commander killed in battle during World War II, Howlett came to promenance in the early 1950s as a multiple finalist in the Wynne Prize with landscape paintings of the Dorrigo Plateau in Northern NSW. She exhibited alongside other pioneering female modernists Hilda Rix Nicholas, Jean Isherwood & Tempe Manning at Karma Cottage Studio in Brisbane and the David Jones Gallery in Sydney. Her works are very rare, and this piece reminds me of prominent Australian Modernist, Kenneth MacQueen. This painting was exhibited and sold at the Lismore Art Prize Exhibition in October 1953, mentioned in the Northern Star newspaper.