Ellen Mary Rope 1855 – 1934
Painter, sculptor.
14 March 1855- 13 September 1934
Education
1870 Schooled at Nottingham Place School in Marylebone run by Octavia and Miranda Hill, Octavia Hill teaching her drawing.
Studied Ipswich School of Art and displayed work there and throughout her career.
1877-1884 Studied at the Slade School of Art under Prof Alphonese Legros, one of first female students studying drawing and painting.
1880 Introduced by Legros to sculpture and modelling.
Some Achievements and Interests
1885-1918 Work regularly shown at Royal Academy exhibitions.
1893 Work commissioned to design four spandrels for the Woman’s Building at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Each relief was approx. 6ft tall and represented Faith, Hope, Charity and Heavenly Wisdom.
Ellen Rope’s ‘Hope’, part of the decoration of Chenies Street Chambers (image courtesy of Elizabeth Crawford) The bas-relief commissioned to decorate the Women’s Building at the 1893 Exposition was in 1897 erected over fireplaces and in alcoves at the Chenies Street Residential Chambers dining room.
1894 Commissioned by Octavia Hill to make bas-reliefs for the Women’s University Settlement in Blackfriars (Fanny Wilkinson laid out the garden), then further architectural commissions for Morley Town Hall, Leeds and Rotherhithe Town Hall.
1897-8 Exhibited at the Paris Salon and 1897, 1902 at the Société des Artists Français.
Regular contributor to Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, also exhibited at galleries in London and around the country.
1896- 1906 Produced work for Della Robbia Pottery.
Focussed on commissions for memorial church decoration.
Issues
1985 Interviewed by Woman at Home, Rope ‘expressed doubts about women becoming successful sculptors: ‘On the whole, men are not much inclined to encourage women in this department of art….The woman sculptor has often to earn a good part of her income by teaching.’ (Crawford 2002: p291)
Paved her own path as one of the first female students at the Slade School of Art.
Connection to Bloomsbury
Studied at the Slade.
Work displayed at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago was transferred to Chenies Street Ladies’ Residential Chambers.
Female networks
The Garrett family and their circle, Octavia and Miranda Hill
Niece Dorothy Anne Aldrich Rope who she taught and shared a studio with, her two nieces Margaret Agnes and Margaret Edith Rope.
The ‘Slade Girls’ – see Slade sculptors: Sculptors at the Slade – Pascal Theatre Company (pascal-theatre.com)
Selected Works
See detailed list of works in Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland (link below).
Further reading:
Crawford, Elizabeth; Enterprising Women: the Garretts and their circle, Francis Boutle, 2002.
Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland
‘Miss Ellen Mary Rope’, Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951, University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII, online database 2011 [http://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/person.php?id=msib5_1206734288, accessed 23 Jan 2023]