Tigers Decorative
Strawberry Cottage Vegetable Garden, By Evelyn Dunbar
Strawberry Cottage Vegetable Garden, By Evelyn Dunbar
Strawberry Cottage was in Hurst Green, Sussex and was the home of Evelyn’s aunt Clara Cowling. She often painted garden scenes and was a regular visitor to Strawberry Cottage gardens, where she would set up her easel. This painting depicts washing on a propped up line and the vegetable garden with a cold frame in the background.
Provenance: Evelyn Dunbar – Alec Dunbar (Evelyn’s Brother) – Florence St Clair (Sister in Law) Dudley (Son) & Ena St Clair – Sarah Hill, nee St Clair.
Medium: Watercolour On Paper
Paper Size: Height: 39 cm | Width: 29 cm
Frame Size: Height: 47 cm | Width: 57 cm
Condition: Untouched Circa: 1938 - 1939
- Evelyn Dunbar -
Evelyn was born in Reading on the 18th December 1906 and was the youngest of five children. She was the daughter of William and Florence. Her father was a tailor and her mother, a keen gardener. In 1913 the family moved to Rochester and Evelyn studied at Rochester school of Art, 1925-1927, she then went on to study at Chelsea school of art, 1927 – 1929. In 1929 she won an exhibition to study at the Royal College of Art and graduated in 1933. In 1940 the Tate gallery bought ‘’Study For Decoration: Flight.
The Brockley murals were commissioned by Brockley County secondary school, Lewisham (now Prendergast School) These murals are considered some of the most important achievements of 20th century mural painting. Charles Mahoney was one of Evelyn’s tutors at The Royal College of Art, Dunbar and Mahoney worked on Brockley school for three years together and became lovers, until they parted ways in 1937. Evelyn was brought up as a Christian Scientist and had a deep faith and Mahoney was a left-wing atheist, so they didn’t see eye to eye.
In April 1940 she was made an Official British War Artist, she was hired by the War Artists Advisory Committee. Her art captured life at home during the war, including land girls and the hard work they did for the war effort. Evelyn was the only female artist to receive a continuous salary for her work at this time. Many of the paintings are in the Imperial War Museum to this day and offer a valid insight, as to what life was like.
Evelyn married Roger Folley in August 1942. He was an agricultural economist and he was called up to serve in the RAF, receiving his flying officer commission in 1941. In 1946 Evelyn took up a part time teaching post at the Oxford School of Art and also became a visiting teacher at The Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Art. After the war she painted Portraits and they played a small but important role in her output. She often painted her older sister Jessie. Dunbar also painted allegorical pictures and especially landscapes. Dunbar made something of a specialty of children’s portraits in the years between 1954 and 1960.
Dunbar had a deep devotion to nature and this was expressed in her work. She had a particular affection for the landscape of Kent. On the evening of 12 May 1960, in the woods near Staple Farm, the Kent farmhouse in which she and Folley were then living, Dunbar suddenly collapsed and died. A post-mortem showed coronary atheroma to have been the cause of death.