Mary FLORENCE

Mrs Mary FLORENCE NEA
nee Sargant
1857
1954

Mary was the sister of the sculptor, F W Sargant, and was born in London (21 July 1857). She studied art under Luc-Olivier Merson in Paris, and at the Slade School with Alphonse Legros. Whybrow includes Florence as an artist of the St Ives Colony in the period 1883-1900 (p 210), but she is not mentioned further within the text and may have been a short-term visitor only.

In 1888 she married an American musician, and lived in Nutley, New Jersey. The couple had a son and a daughter. In 1892 her husband died and she returned to Britain, living at Marlow, Bucks and in Cheyne Row, Chelsea (1913ff), but retaining an American base. She is remembered mainly for her power as a painter of frescos, and for the strong force with which she tore her work away from the confines and techniques of academic art. This, of course, sits well within the social realism and impressionist tendencies found amongst the Newlyn painters. She died in Twickenham, Middlesex, 14 December 1954.

media

Figure, rustic and domestic painter; craftworker, muralist

works and access

Access to work: Chantrey Bequest paintings: Children at Chess (1903, purchased 1949); Suffer Little Children to Come Unto Me and Pentecost (1913, purchased 1932)

exhibitions

NEA

memberships

Society of Mural Decorators

Tempera Society

NEAC

references

Buckman (2006) Dictionary of Artists in Britain since 1945

Chantrey Bequest list: Tate On-line

Gaze (1997) Dictionary of Women Artists

Hardie (2009) Artists in Newlyn and West Cornwall (p325)

Johnson & Greutzner (1975) Dictionary of British Artists

Whybrow (1994) St Ives (1883-1900 list)

The Year's Art