Amy Watt
(Plymouth, Devon 1900-1956 Chelsea, London)
Portrait of the Artist's Daughter, Mary Millar Watt (1924-2023), c.1930 *SOLD*
oil on mahogany panel
signed lower left 'Amy'
with a Winsor & Newton label, verso
36 x 27 cm.
Provenance
From the Estate of the artist's daughter, Mary Millar Watt (1924-2023)
This tender portrait of the artist's daughter Mary was intended as a keepsake for her own collection. It is painted on a costly mahogany panel but in an intimately small, domestic size, and she has signed the work with her first name only, 'Amy'. It has been painted with all the love and keen observation of both a mother, and artist.
Watt was a busy artist, in a supportive marriage with fellow artist, John Millar Watt (1895-1975), whom she met whilst studying at St. Martin’s School of Fine Art. They married in 1923 and both worked for advertising agencies as staff artists. They moved to Dedham in Essex where they designed and built a modern studio overlooking Dedham Vale, befriending the artist Alfred Munnings and his wife, Violet, frequent visitors to their home.
Watt became a member of the Ipswich Art Club from 1926-1935, before the couple moved to St. Ives in ‘35. Amy and her husband became key members of the well-established artistic colony of St. Ives, taking on the Chy-an-Chy Studio overlooking the harbour. They would have got to know Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson, who famously relocated from Hampstead to St. Ives at the start of WWII.
Over the course of her life Watt exhibited 19 works at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions between 1929 and her death in 1956, and also showed at the Paris Salon over the years, as well as in local shows in Suffolk, Essex and St Ives. After the Second World War she and her husband moved to London and made their home in Chelsea, at 8 Walton Street.