Vera Stacey WAINWRIGHT
A new correspondent (2011) has given us a wonderful insight into the person of Vera S Wainwright, and we include an edited version of this. The whole memoire has been added to our files.
' I was brought up to call her "Aunt Vera", but her association was with my father whom she always addressed as "DHOST". She became in fact my "Godmother", and persuaded my father to educate me in my early years in the Roman Catholic Faith. As I neared graduation in medicine she urged that I become a "Missionary Physician", obliging my reading in missionary works in Africa, and especially the work of Albert Schweitzer.
I keep three oil paintings made by Vera in Cornwall in my collections. One is a small seascape of the Cornish Coast; two are somewhat larger works - one a pastoral scene to which I am much attached. Vera also had a spinning wheel and often engaged in making small handicraft works = ties; scarves, and such. I have still a tie made on her spinning wheel. I am 84 now and it is not likely that I shall publish any autobiographical writing. I have been away from England since 1949, and now seldom travel back to Cornwall or the West country. As I knew her she was perhaps one of the most kind and gentle persons I have known; empathic, supportive, understanding, with a rare spiritual quality.'
Vera Wainwright exhibited two paintings, both of Devon scenes, at the 1937 exhibitions at the Newlyn Art Gallery. In 1969, poems by Vera were published in book form with the title, Poems and Masks.
media
Painter
works and access
Works Include: Spring on Dartmoor (1937); North Bovey, Devon (1937); 3 paintings of Cornish scenes (private collection, NY state)
exhibitions
NAG 1937
misc further info
WCAA folder
references
Author: Poems and Masks (1969) with illustrations
Hardie (2009) Artists in Newlyn and West Cornwall p290
NAG Exhibition record (WCAA)