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M.E.Eldridge

M.E.Eldridge: Mildred Elsi(e) Eldridge was an English and Welsh Painter and Illustrator.

Eldridge was born in Wimbledon, London on August 1st 1909 and died in Wales in 1991. She was the daughter of Frederick Charles Eldridge and Mary Millicent Chevalier, her father’s family being from Gloucestershire yeoman stock and her mother’s from long-time Huguenot immigrants.

Elsi attended Wimbledon High School, Wimbledon School of Art and The Royal College of Art. From there she graduated in 1934. Her tutors and co-students at the RCA included William Rothenstein, Henry Tonks, Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious. She became friends, in London, with, among others, G.K.Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, H.J. Massingham, Tom Hennell and Vincent Lines

While at the Royal College she painted two murals. One is a panel of ‘The Brockley Murals'; other panels were painted by Charles Mahoney, Evelyn Dunbar and Violet Martin. She also painted a mural for the Prudential Insurance Group at their Isis sports club in Chiswick, London.

As part of her graduation portfolio she presented a large oil painting entitled ‘Telling The Bees’. For this picture she received the Royal College of Art Prix de Rome Travelling Scholarship, which funded her to travel to Italy, to study and paint in Rome, Florence, Venice, Ravenna, and move into a circle of painters, writers and art historians centred round both the Bernard and Mary Berenson’ Villa at I Tatti and the friends of Aubrey and Lina Waterfield, the niece of Janet Ross at their Villa in Poggio Gherardo outside Aulla, where she stayed for part of her trip. Aubrey Waterfield’s paintings are much admired. Lina Waterfield in her book A Castle In Italy has delightfully described the life of that place and time. Here Elsi met not only the Berensons and the Waterfields but the ever-changing set of the Stracheys, the Lawrences and others who spent time in Tuscany. In Eldridge's unpublished Autobiography she describes Frieda Lawrence at the dinner-table ‘bursting out of her bodice’!

On returning to London Eldridge quickly made an impression. A press cutting says: 'Miss Eldridge is the first painter at this year’s Royal Academy to have sold all her paintings'

In the Spring of 1937, she held a successful and well-reviewed one-person exhibition at the Beaux Arts Gallery in Bruton Street, London. From this period of her life there are a considerable number of paintings. Many were bought by the Leonard Duke, a significant collector who became her patron over many years, and others by John Speddan Lewis of John Lewis. Others are in the collections of Art Galleries such as the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester, the Birmingham City Art Gallery, and the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth.

On the strength of the success of that exhibition she bought a Bentley convertible and went for a tour of Scotland and Wales. Part of that tour took her to Chirk and Oswestry. Some months later she threw up London life and returned to teach at Oswestry High School and Moreton Hall School for Girls

In Chirk she met the poet R.S. Thomas, who was the curate at the local parish church and they were married in Bala in 1940. They lived initially at Tallarn Green, when Thomas became curate there; they subsequently moved to Manafon, Montgomeryshire (where Thomas was rector, 1942-54), then to Eglwys-fach, near Aberystwyth ( where Thomas was vicar  at St. Michael’s, 1954-67) and finally to Aberdaron, at the far tip of Pen Llyn in Gwynedd, Wales (where Thomas was vicar at St. Hywyn’s, 1967-78). Finally on the retirement of R.S. Thomas from the church they lived in a small cottage overlooking the sea at Porth Neigwl near Aberdaron.

Manafon
Eldridge was a prolific painter throughout her life; a Catalogue Raisonnée of her work lists more than 2000 extant completed works. She painted almost exclusively in oil until she moved from Manafon. There she completed the commission for the Pilgrim Trust Recording Britain Project. These are now in the archives of the Victoria and Albert Museum

She started illustrating Children’s books for Faber and Faber authors.

In 1953 Eldridge received a commission from the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital in Gobowen to paint a mural which would display on the walls of the nurses' dining room at the hospital. The mural is called The Dance of Life

Helen Williams Ellis writes /: This must be one of the most astonishing masterpieces of the 20thCentury - a masterpiece until recently, woefully neglected. It is now displayed at the Glyndwr University Creative Industries Building in Wrecsam

A brief account account of the themes of the mural was provided in The Illustrated: The Journal of The Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic and District Hospital (Spring 1991). There are a number of accounts of the mural. One was provided by Louis Behrend, who became a close friend of Eldridge, and had with his wife Mary commissioned Stanley Spencer to paint the murals for the Sandham Memorial Chapel in Burghclere near Newbury; another was that provided by the Art Historian Alan Powers who drew attention to the mural in the pages of Country Life another by Marie Carter, the archivist at the hospital who for many years oversaw the safety of the painting.

In 1956, with the mural incomplete, Eldridge complied, albeit unwillingly, to leave Manafon to accompany RS’s increasingly obsessive journey into the west. These moments are movingly interpreted by Neil McKay in his Radio play Alone Together which charts the somewhat unusual relationship of R.S.Thomas and Eldridge. The whole story is more completely told by Byron Rogers in his biography of RS: The Man Who Went Into The West and in Helen Williams Ellis's documentary Who was Mrs R S Thomas? O Flaen Dy Lygaid

Eglwys Fach
Here Eldridge painted watercolour landscapes; but more and more her interest was in the minute depiction of birds and flowers. She re-invented the arts of botanical and ornithological illustration She starts to recreate the kind of natural history illustration characterised by the illustrations of Jacques de la Moine, Redoute, Marianne North at Kew and others She starts to reveal that passion for taxonomy and catalogueing that maybe derived from her being the daughter of a jeweller. She was in all things precise. She has endless drawers of animal and bird specimens, their wings and skulls minutely categorised and drawn, she designs clothes, furniture, windows, door handles with an obsessive attention to detail.

Many of these are reproduced as greetings cards by the Medici society while others are exhibited and sold at The Royal Water Colour Society firstly in Conduit Street in Mayfair and later at their Bankside gallery. A large number are bought by Spink better known as Coin dealers in St James. Eldridge's work is much collected by the great collector Leonard Duke, Cyril Fry Anthony Spink and Arnold Palmer of the Huntley and Palmer business She starts to lecture and hold Art classes under the auspices of Alwyn Rees at the ExtraMural Department at Aberystwyth University. Initially in Welshpool and then Newtown, but later as far away as Newquay. So she is out three nights a week.

In a strange linkage with the past it turns out that close neighbours are now Louis and Mary Behrend Their house at Llanwrin was full with paintings by Spencer and Henry Lamb and Spencer and his brother Gilbert come to call. Here too Eldridge becomes friends with [Darsie Japp], [John Petts],[Arthur Giardelli], the playwright [N.C.Hunter], the naturalist [William Condry], the botanist Mary Richards and Monica Rawlins at Brynmeheryn

Aberdaron
In Aberdaron and in the house given to her the Keating sisters of Plas Yn Rhiw, she works incessantly on natural history studies. Her eyesight is failing, she is regularly in hospital and finally in 1991 comes to the end.

Major Public Works: Brockley Mural Dance Of Life Llanpumpsaint Church Window

Books written and Illustrated: Gwenno the Goat Rupert Hart Davis London 1953 In My Garden. Medici. London. 1983 On The Sea Shore. Medici. London.1986 Autobiography. Unpublished Garden Journal. Unpublished

Books Illustrated: Dorothy Richards The Old Shoe House. Faber. London. 1943 Walter De La Mare. The Three Royal Monkeys. Faber. London. 1946 Mathena Blomefield. Nuts in The Rookery. Faber. London. 1946 Mathena Blomefield. The Bulleymung Pit. Faber. London. 1946 Mathena Blomefield. Bow Net and Water Lilies. Faber. London. 1946 Walter De La Mare. The Three Royal Monkeys .Faber. London. 1946 Vere Webster. Spindle Spider. Faber.London.1946 Mary Thorne Quelch. Herbs and How To Know Them. Faber London 1946 The Starborn. Henry Williamson. Faber. London E.H.Partridge. Journey Home. Faber. London. 1946 Dorothy Richards Pussy Willow and Bow Bear. Faber. London. 1948 Dorothy Richards Roma Rabbit’s Picnic. Faber. London. 1948 Dorothy Richards Merry Folk Of Flowerdale. Faber. London. 1948 Dorothy Richards Flip Frog’s New Jumper. Faber. London. 1948 Dorothy Richards Merry Merry Maytime. Faber. London. 1948 Mrs. C.F. Leyel. Elixirs Of Life. Faber. London. 1948 Mrs. C.F. Leyel. Heartsease. Faber. London. 1949 Mrs. C.F. Leyel. Herbal Delights. Faber. London. 1950 Mrs. C.F. Leyel. Green Medicine. Faber. London. 1952 Mrs. C.F. Leyel. Cinquefoil. Faber. London. 1957

Archives R. S. Thomas Research Centre, Bangor University, North Wales Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital, nr. Oswestry, Shropshire Victoria and Albert Museum, Print and Study Room, South Kensington