Jean Isherwood OAM (1911–2006), artist, was born in Marrickville and won a scholarship to the National Art School at East Sydney Technical College at the age of fourteen. She began her career as a fashion artist with an advertising agency in 1929, while continuing to study, including taking classes at the Royal Art Society with Italian-born artist Antonio Dattilo Rubbo. Influenced by prevailing modernist movements of the 1930s, she first exhibited in 1934 with the Australian Watercolour Institute, of which she became a member in 1947. She married the arts administrator John Dabron in 1940, and they lived in Springwood in the Blue Mountains until they separated in 1948. Between 1950 and 1980, she won nineteen prizes for watercolours and 37 for oil paintings and entered the Archibald competition nine times; among her subjects were John Coburn (1966) and Lloyd Rees (1964), and her last entry was a Self-portrait (1974). She also taught at the National Art School from 1961 to 1974. After travelling around New South Wales in 1959, Isherwood's focus turned to landscapes; this was reiterated in 1974 after a trip to Central Australia, after which she bought a property at Moonbi, near Tamworth. Isherwood's works are held in private and public collections, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the National Gallery of Victoria.
