Dorothy Jenkin

Dorothy Catherine Wentworth Jenkin (née Venning; 23 October 1892 – 13 April 1995) was a New Zealand watercolorist, botanical illustrator, and printmaker. She was a founding member of the Invercargill Art Society and participated in campaigning for a public art gallery in Invercargill. She was involved in ensuring the acquisition of Anderson Park and the establishment of the Invercargill Art Gallery at that location. Many of her works are held at the Rakiura Museum and have been reproduced as prints and postcards.

Biography Jenkin was born in Paddington, London on 23 October 1892 to Mary Kate Venning and her husband Wentworth and named Dorothy Catherine Wentworth Venning. She studied art at the Royal College of Art (where she was only one of three women in her cohort), and while there met her husband Thomas Hugh Jenkin, who was also studying to become an artist. In 1922, after Thomas had gained a position as a teacher at Otago Boys' High School and also controller of the Dunedin School of Art, they emigrated to New Zealand.

Sometime in 1925 Thomas' contract with the Dunedin School of Art was not renewed and Jenkin and he moved their family to Invercargill. In 1929 Jenkin had an artwork published in the first volume of the journal Art of New Zealand. She also exhibited with the Canterbury Society of Arts in the 1930s. She was a founding member of the Invercargill Art Society (now part of the Southland Art Society) and exhibited frequently there, specialising in still life paintings. Around this time, at the suggestion of Cedric Smith, the curator at the Rakiura Museum, Jenkin undertook watercolour studies of Stewart Island fungi. Many of her original botanical illustrations are now held at the Rakiura Museum.

Jenkin lived on Stewart Island / Rakiura along for 33 years, until she was 98 at which point she went to live with her daughters in Clyde. In 1992 the Rakiura Museum created a special issue of Jenkin's paintings, to celebrate her 100th birthday. She died on 13 April 1995 and is buried with her husband at Saint Johns Cemetery in Invercargill.