Dorothy Leviny

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Bertha “Dorothy” Leviny (1881–1968) was an Australian artist from Castlemaine, Victoria. Born at Buda, the family home built by her father, Ernest Leviny, a Hungarian-born silversmith, Dorothy grew up with nine siblings. She studied art at the Castlemaine School of Mines in 1900 and then at the Bendigo School of Mines from 1901–1908 under Arthur T. Woodward; her sisters Mary and Gertrude also studied there, and Mary later studied painting in Melbourne.

Dorothy and her younger sister Hilda exhibited in the First Australian Exhibition of Women’s Work in 1907. Dorothy showed a still life and wallpaper designs, and her wallpaper design won second prize. They later exhibited in Castlemaine with other prominent women artists.

After a spell in Melbourne at the Domestic Science College, Dorothy worked as a house mistress and matron at schools before returning to Buda in 1923 after their mother’s death. The Leviny wealth gave them comfort and space to pursue the arts. Dorothy loved gardening, kept bees at Buda, and once ran a lavender farm in Silvan that did not succeed.

Dorothy and her sisters, with other Castlemaine women, helped establish the Castlemaine Art Gallery and Museum, and Dorothy served as its director for five years. She studied metalwork and enameling with Stanley Ellis at the Castlemaine Technical School from 1925 and continued silversmithing and pewter work at RMIT into her sixties, often displaying pieces in her father’s studio at Buda. Her notable work includes a Copper Tea and Coffee Service held by the National Gallery of Victoria.

Dorothy Leviny died on 9 April 1968 in Castlemaine. The Buda house remains a testament to the Leviny sisters’ crafts. In 1970, Hilda deed-gifted Buda to the Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum, and it opened to the public as a museum in 1982.