Elinor Mary Monsell 1879 – 1954
(married name Darwin)
Painter, wood-engraver, illustrator.
May 1879 – 2 May 1954
Education
Home educated.
Studied at the Slade School of Art, Bloomsbury.
Some Key Achievements and Interests
1898 Awarded a scholarship at the Slade School of Art.
1898 Won first prize for a drawing she entered for the UCL Slade Collections.
1899 Awarded 3rd prize for Figure Painting and a certificate for Figure Drawing.
1899 Met and started to work for W B Yeats as an illustrator.
1907 Produced the first press mark for Dun Emer Press, an Irish private press.
1904 Commissioned by Yeats to design a logo for the Abbey Theatre (The National Theatre of Ireland). Her image of Queen Maeve is still used today.
Wrote and illustrated children’s books with her husband, writer Bernard Darwin.
Taught wood engraving to Gwen Raverat who went on to gain a reputation as a talented engraver and co-founded the Society of Wood Engravers.
1913 Exhibited at the Whitechapel Exhibition of Irish Art in London.
Fellow of the Eugenics Society.
Issues
Women artists of her time were overshadowed by male artists.
The Slade School was one of the few schools where women had access to life models.
Connection to Bloomsbury
Slade School of Art.
Female Networks
Gwen John and other Slade contemporaries, Gwen Raverat.
Works include:
A Doorway.
Child with Toy Bird.
The Annunciation.
Cover for Stephen Gwynn’s The Fair Hills of Ireland publ 1906.
Illustrations for The Tale of Mr Tootleoo (1925) , Every Idle Dream (1948) and Mr Tootleoo and Company (1935) written by Bernard Darwin.
Further reading
Curating Equality | UCL CULTURE – UCL – University College London
Unfulfilled Potential: The Forgotten Women Artists of the Slade School (pallant.org.uk)