DUNHAM, Joanna

1936 - 2014

Joanna Elizabeth Dunham was born at Luton, Bedfordshire on 6 May 1936, daughter of architect and artist, Peter Browning Dunham and his wife Constance Amy née Young (26 August 1911-1 April 1992), who married at Luton, Bedfordshire in 1935. Her father's aunt was the artist Amy Katherine Dugdale née Browning, who married artist Thomas Cantrell Dugdale. Joanna was educated at Bedales School, Hampshire and at the Slade School of Fine Art 1954-1956 and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She then worked as a professional actress on stage, screen, and television with her first professional appearance at the Royal Court, Liverpool in 1958 in 'The Deserters'. Joanna joined the Old Vic Company in 1961 and made her New York debut in 1962 as Juliet in 'Romeo and Juliet'. She married at Luton on 3 December 1961, Henry A. Osborne, whom she divorced in 1972, having had two children, Abigail and Benedict. When her acting parts began drying up, she resumed her first love of painting, mostly landscape and still life and, as an artist, had solo shows with Piers Feetham Gallery in London, with a Browing Exhibition at Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich, to coincide with the issue of her book 'Amy K Browning-An Impressionist in the Women's Movement' (1955), who was her great-aunt. Joanna created a gallery in a converted farm building at her home at Sternfield, Suffolk, from where she mounted numerous exhibitions, as well as showing at the New English Art Club in London and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. She married secondly in 1992, playwright and novelist Reginald 'Reggie' Oliver (born 1952). A Friend at the Ipswich Art Society and exhibited from Smokehouse Farm, Sternfield, Saxmundham, Suffolk in 1997, two paintings 'Primroses' and 'Lilies'. Joanna Elizabeth Oliver died at Sternfield on 25 November 2014.

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Works by This Artist