Kathleen Streatfeild
(1877 - 1960)

Slade Studens Decorting the Walls of the Art School, c.1896

watercolour on paper
with identifying inscriptions in ink underneath the figures: ‘Ernest Thessiger Actor’; ‘Sir Augustus John R.A.’; ‘Ida Nettleship sketching the decorations’, and with original exhibition label ‘Stephen Somerville LTD, Paintings Draeings and Prints’, verso.
signed lower right with monogram ‘KS’

17 x 13 cm.
(framed 26 x 22 cm.)
in a period frame

Kathleen Streatfeild (1877-1960) was a student at the Slade School of Art at the same time as Augustus John and his first wife, Ida Nettleship, both depicted here in this charming cartoon of Slade students decorating the walls of the art school by Kathleen. It must date to around 1898, when they were all nearing the end of their studies under Fred Brown, Henry Tonks and Wilson Steer. Kathleen was the same age as Ida, who had started at the Slade earlier than her friends in 1892 as a 15 year old, becoming the “matriarch” of the group. How sad then, that Ida died in childbirth in 1907, not to mention her heartache over John’s mistress, Dorelia. Meanwhile there’s not a lot of information to be found on Kathleen, who it would seem mainly exhibited watercolours - but she was active in the suffrage movement, as you’d expect.