Joyce Dennys

Isobel Dorothy Joyce Dennys (14 August 1893 – 23 February 1991) was an English cartoonist, illustrator and painter. She worked for the Voluntary Aid Detachment during the First World War and designed and created recruitment posters for both it and the Women's Royal Naval Service. Dennys spent 1919 and 1921 working in Australia before returning to England in 1921. She contributed humorous illustrations in the form of sketches and strip cartoons to journals and illustrated a series of books. Dennys also published plays catered primarily for amateurs and provided the cover illustrations to many of them. She took up oil painting at age 70 and she authored her autobiography in 1983. Examples of her oil paintings are held by three museums and a blue plaque has been installed at her Budleigh Salterton home since April 2015 to commemorate her life.

Early life On 14 August 1893, Dennys was born in either Murree or Shimla in India, then a part of the British Empire. She was the daughter of the Indian Staff Corps captain Charles John Dennys who was stationed in the country and his wife, the Scottish-born housewife Lucy Winewood ( Tulloch). Dennys relocated from India to Eastbourne with her three older siblings and mother in 1896. She attended kindergarten in Eastbourne and went to Eastbourne Ladies' College. During the First World War, she served in the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) as a member of the Joint War Committee of the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St John at Budleigh Salterton Auxiliary Hospital in the local Budleigh Salterton hospital nursing wounded soldiers between December 1914 and December 1915. Dennys then served at the larger 2 Exeter Military Hospital from January 1916 to October 1916. Dennys was in high demand in the state and her works were frequently exhibited at the New South Wales Society of Artists and the Salon of Fine Art, Sydney. Her work was accepted by The Bulletin and her drawings were reproduced by Art of Australia in July 1919 and in each of the March 1921, August 1921 and September 1921 issues of Home. For that year, Dennys' paintings of Budleigh Salterton were put online by the BBC in partnership with the Public Catalogue Foundation since several works held by Fairlynch Museum were included in the national collection. A planned exhibition of her work by Fairlynch Museum was abandoned due to "unforeseen circumstances" in January 2016. The British Red Cross and Museum holds a hand written note accompanied by drawings from the First World War by Dennys in its collection.

Books