Painter/print-maker Dorothy Dolph Jensen began her study of art at a very young age. Born in Forest Grove, Oregon she was sent to Europe at the age of twelve where she would remain until 1914. While in Europe, she began art studies first in Antwerp with a Monsieur Hanneau and then became a student at the Academie Julian in Paris. It was while attending this school that she first learned how to produce etchings at the age of 13.

Returning to the Northwest in 1914, Jensen moved to Seattle but returned to Portland to study at the Portland Art School with Harry Wentz and Sidney Bell.

Following her marriage in 1919 to Lloyd Jensen, the artist would remain in Seattle permanently, becoming one of the City's most highly respected artists. Lloyd Jensen himself was a noteworthy craftsman. He produced exceptionally beautiful hand-carved frames not only for his wife but also for most of Seattle and Alaska's most important artists.

Having retained and developed her interest in printmaking, Jensen became one of the city's few artists working in intaglio methods in the 1920's and 30's.

A founding member of the Women Painters Of Washington in 1930, Dorothy Dolph Jensen was also a charter member of the Northwest Watercolor Society and an early exhibitor and long time member of the Northwest Print-makers organization, which was formed in 1928.
Her exhibition history includes a one-woman show at the Seattle Art Museum, the Seattle Fine Arts Society, Women Painters of Washington as well as exhibitions in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Chicago, Cleveland and San Francisco.

Her work is in the Permanent Collection of the Portland Art Museum, the Tacoma Art Museum and the Hallie-Ford Museum of Art, Salem, OR.

**This portrait was from the class of Frederick Varley in which the Founders of WPW met and formed the organization.

The Graduate, c. 1934, oil on canvas

Old Ironsides, 1935, drypoint etching

Woman in Blue Dress, 1930**

Her work is illustrated in
the following books:

Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945
Patricia Trenton
University of California Press.

An Encyclopedia of Women Artists
of the American West
Phil and Marian Yoshiki Kovinick
University of Texas Press.

The Pacific Northwest Landscape,
A Painted History
Kitty Harmon
Sasquatch Press.

©David Martin
& the artist's estate.
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