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Eleanor Hughes

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Eleanor Hughes
Born
Eleanor Mary Waymouth

3 April 1882
Christchurch, New Zealand
Died1959 (aged 76–77)
Lamorna, Cornwall, England
NationalityNew Zealand British
Known forPainting
SpouseRobert Morson Hughes
RelativesAlice Waymouth (sister)

Eleanor Mary Hughes (née Waymouth), (3 April 1882 – 1959) was a New Zealand landscape artist who mostly painted in watercolours.[1] She settled and worked in Britain and became an active member of the Newlyn School of artists and the nearby Lamorna artists colony.[2]

Biography

[edit]

Hughes was born in Christchurch in New Zealand. She was the daughter of Frederick and Alice Waymouth, and had a sister Alice Waymouth who was also a notable artist.[3] Her family home, a homestead named Karewa in Christchurch, was sold and renamed in 1905 and became the historic property known as Mona Vale.[4] Hughes grew up at Karewa and studied at Canterbury College School of Art.[5]

In 1900 she won a medal from the Canterbury Fine Art Society for a series of drawings of trees.[6] Her parents were originally from the west country of England and she choose to study art in England. She first visited Britain to study with C N Worsley between 1901 and 1903 and also, for a short while, attended the School of Painting and Drawing run by Stanhope Forbes and Elizabeth Forbes in Newlyn.[7]

She painted a watercolour of the International Exhibition held in 1906 in Christchurch's Hagley Park.[8] It depicts the exhibition's main building, an imposing white structure with a gold dome and two towers.

In 1907 Hughes returned to England to study at Frank Spenlove's Yellow Door Studio in London before returning to Newlyn to study at the Forbes School.[7] In Newlyn, she met and, in January 1910 at St Buryan's Church, married a fellow student, the painter Robert Morson Hughes.[9][10] The couple designed and built their own home, Chyangweal, near St Buryan.[6] The house became a regular social centre for the artists settled in the area.[11] Eleanor Hughes was a skilled pianist and would lead recitals at the house.[6] In Cornwall the couple became lifelong friends with Laura Knight and her husband Harold Knight, both of whom painted them a number of times.[11]

Hughes owned her own studio in the Lamorna valley where she created landscape paintings, often featuring the stone walls, waterfalls and streams of the local area. Hughes also painted in France and the Pyrenees on a regular basis.[6] From 1911, she exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy and eventually with the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours.[12] In total Hughes had some 37 pictures shown at the Royal Academy.[10] In 1933 she was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours.[12] As well as in galleries in Newlyn and St Ives, Hughes also had works shown at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and at the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts.[6] Hughes sold her studio in 1940 and appears to have produced little after doing so.[6] She died in Lamorna in 1959.[9]

References

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  1. ^ Grant M. Waters (1975). Dictionary of British Artists Working 1900–1950. Eastbourne Fine Art.
  2. ^ David Buckman (1989). Artists in Britain Since 1945. Art Dictionaries Ltd. ISBN 0953260909.
  3. ^ "Waymouth, Alice Beatrice, 1884–1963". Waymouth, Alice Beatrice, 1884–1963 | Items | National Library of New Zealand | National Library of New Zealand. 1 January 1884. Retrieved 5 March 2022.
  4. ^ Calhoun, Ann (2000). The Arts & Crafts Movement in New Zealand, 1870–1940: Women Make Their Mark. Auckland: Auckland University Press. pp. 93–94.
  5. ^ "HUGHES Eleanor Mary 1882–1959 | Artist Biographies". www.artbiogs.co.uk. Retrieved 20 September 2019.
  6. ^ a b c d e f Catherine Wallace (2002). Under the Open Sky – The Paintings of the Newlyn and Lamorna Artists 1880–1940 in the Public Collections of Cornwall and Plymouth. truran. ISBN 978-185022-168-5.
  7. ^ a b "Eleanor Hughes". cornwall artists index. Retrieved 4 December 2017.
  8. ^ McLean, Thomas (5 October 2024). "Follow you art". New Zealand Listener. 292 (4369): 30–33. ISSN 2381-9553.
  9. ^ a b Caroline Fox (1985). Painting in Newlyn 1900–1930. Newlyn Orion. ISBN 0950657948.
  10. ^ a b Marion Whybrow (1994). St Ives 1883-1993 Portrait of an Art Colony. Antique Collectors' Club. ISBN 1851491708.
  11. ^ a b Elizabeth Knowles (2012). Laura Knight in the open air. Sansom & Co. ISBN 978-1-906593-65-0.
  12. ^ a b Frances Spalding (1990). 20th Century Painters and Sculptors. Antique Collectors' Club. ISBN 1-85149-106-6.
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