Embroidered Tortoise, c.1940s  *SOLD*

textile mixed media

H14 x W10 x D26 cm.

Ellen Hallett was a Bristolian artist who lived her entire life at 3, Logan Road, the family home, with a holiday pavilion in Portishead with sweeping views of the Bristol Channel, which provided inspiration and much of the subject matter for her drawings, watercolours and etchings. She became an expert etcher, and wrote a book for Faber & Faber in 1963, on the process for ‘Blue Print and Dyeline’.

Ellen’s parents were well-to-do grocers with a shop on Gloucester Road, Bristol, while her family on her mother’s side - the Perrets, were a long line of artists. Although she didn’t formerly study art, Ellen attended Redland High School for Girls, where she excelled and became Head Girl and then an art teacher there until retirement. Although etching was her primary medium, she experimented with watercolour, clay and textiles too, as well as being an accomplished silversmith. Like so many women of the era, she was somewhat of a chameleon, turning her hand to crafts within the umbrella of art – crafts which today are now finally being given attention as works of art in their own right. She took a course in needlework at Westfield College in London, in the late 1930s (now part of Queen Mary’s, University of London, but established in 1882 explicitly to educate women with a focus on art and science).

Ellen exhibited variously at the National Society, in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions, as well as at the Royal West of England Academy, Bristol.