By any name, Joan was drawing on her zest for life

August 28 2002

Joan Dent, Artist 1916-2002

By the time Joan Norma Lintott arrived in Sydney at the age of 11, this restless, eager child was already rushing into print. She became a "Piccaninny", contributing poems, stories and sketches to the junior page of the Woman's Mirror - a paper with which she was to continue to be associated in adult life.

Born in Queensland, the niece of the English artist and diplomat E. Barnard Lintott (1875-1951), Joan was educated at PLC Pymble and studied art at East Sydney Technical College. J.S. Watkins and Joshua Smith also gave her classes.

Never slow in coming forward, she told me, "When I was 16 I marched into the Bulletin and said cheerfully, 'Well, I've come to illustrate the adults' stories now.' The old editor, Gruff [Mr Griffiths] with a twinkle in his eye said, 'Can you draw as well as Townsend and Norman Lindsay?' 'I can try,' I answered. So he gave me an article. It needed an old man and a young boy making an aeroplane. I got my grandfather to pose for me. It was accepted!"

Under a variety of names (Lintott, her maiden name, Neville from her first marriage, Dent from her second, Deirdre for the fun of it, but mostly using Anne Drew), Joan illustrated hundreds of articles and stories. For the Herald in the '40s she collaborated with her first husband, Ken Neville, on two original comic strips, Kaark the Crow and Little Fella Nukluk. She also illustrated Ken's classic children's story Dalton the Dolphin.

Joan's black-and-white work was exceptional and she contributed regularly to other papers and magazines, including Fashion and Society, the Women's Weekly and New Zealand's Mirror. For the publisher Angus and Robertson, she designed many book covers, among the best-known the Pollyanna books of Margaret Piper Chalmers.

As a gift for the young Princess Elizabeth, Joan was asked to illustrate a book of children's stories written by Gladys Lister. Later, for King George VI, the City of Cairns commissioned Joan to illustrate a book with Sydney photographer H.V. (Vic) Chargoise on the Barrier Reef. The King died before it was published, so it was presented to the Queen during her first Australian visit.

In 1965, Joan was on a pedestrian crossing at Railway Square when she was struck by a car. Told she would never walk again, she took delight in proving the experts wrong. She remained cheerful in the face of the pain that was to dog her for the rest of her life.

Many mixed and solo shows followed; one better-known Australia-wide was the Peter Stuyvesant Travelling Exhibition of 1975. Joan also showed in the Archibald, the Wynne, the Sulman, the Portia Geach and at the Adelaide Festival, and was an exhibiting member of the Australian Watercolour Institute since 1978. Two works, The White Kangaroo and The Storm, are in the Commonwealth Collection.

Joan also painted portraits, her sitters ranging from Justice F. Hutley of the Supreme Court, theatre director Robin Lovejoy, and George Hawkes, a former president of the Journalists' Club, to the Rev Roger Bush and Joy Muir, president of the Housewives Association.

At Manly's Raglan Gallery in July 1992, Joan was the only white artist invited to exhibit in an otherwise all-Aboriginal art exhibition. When he saw her paintings the late Burnum Burnum told her, "You have understood the spirit of my people."

Joan is survived by her only daughter, Joanne. Asked for the qualities they valued in Joan, most friends talk of her love, her compassion, especially for the small and vulnerable, her courage and her open-hearted generosity, even to strangers.

A close friend, Colleen Clifford, once sent her a birthday card quoting a particularly apt passage from Ecclesiasticus: "As the vine I have brought forth a pleasant odour, and my flowers are the fruit of honour and riches."