Featured Image of Mary Dawson Holmes by Fred Elwell (1904)
Beverley Art Gallery Curator (seen under the picture on the wall) – Hannah Willetts talked to us about local artist Mary Elwell – bringing some of Mary’s work for us to view and discuss. Hannah told us about the Beverley Art Gallery’s multiple gallery spaces to explore, with its temporary exhibitions and highlights of the collection. The permanent collection is displayed in the beautifully restored Edwardian space founded in 1910.
We had a good turn out for this meeting and enjoyed hearing about how Hannah had ended up in Beverley after a range of jobs in the Art World. It is certainly not the last she has seen of us after her invitation to ‘Go behind the scenes’. There were a number of us keen to take her up on the offer sounds like a nice thing to combine with a future Lunch Club date.
Perhaps we could whet your appetite to visit us in Beverley by sharing a little bit about this very talented lady. Mary Dawson Elwell (1874-1952) – Painter, notably of interiors and landscapes she was a member of the Society of Women Artists and exhibited with the Royal Academy of Art and the Royal Glasgow institute of Fine Arts. Born in Liverpool the daughter of a shipping merchant. She married Hull oil broker George Homes in 1895 he died in 1913, then in 1914 Mary remarried Beverley born painter Fred Elwell who was said to be warm, humorous with wit and natural charm. Mary already knew Fred well as she had studied art under him. However it is said that it was Mary’s money that enabled the Elwells to travel extensively on the continent. Sadly Mary had a stroke in 1945 which incapacitated her and she died in 1952. There was a retrospective of the work of the two Elwells in 1953 in both Beverley and Hull, Fred lived on without her until he died 1958.