Eileen Bell; Artist, children's writer and mentor to the young Alan Titchmarsh
Hyfler/Rosner
04 February 2005
a painting:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/essex/going_out/visual_arts/eileen_bell.shtml
Eileen Elizabeth Jefferd Bowerbank, artist: born Bristol 28
October 1907; married 1937 Randall Bell (died 2004; one
son); died Leiston, Suffolk 27 January 2005.
Eileen Bell was a prolific natural artist who was still
applying paint to canvas into her nineties. Her 2003
retrospective at the Chappel Galleries, near Colchester,
showed her to be a rich colourist, producing still-lifes
with a quirky perspective and sea and beach scenes inspired
by the coast of Suffolk where she lived latterly.
Bell was an artist for whom contrasts of tone and the
quality of paint were important. She learned from some of
the best teachers in pre- and post-Second World War London.
Bell was also a trained musician as well as a potter,
interior designer, writer and the early cultural mentor of
the television gardener and writer Alan Titchmarsh.
She was born in Clifton, Bristol, in 1907, elder daughter of
John Bowerbank, a bank manager, and his wife Margaret, an
amateur cellist. The Bowerbanks were hostile to Eileen's
becoming an artist and so, instead, she studied the piano.
It was only after her 1937 marriage to Randall Bell, a
consultant surveyor, that she could study art.
In 1939 she joined the St John's Wood School of Art,
teachers including the co-principals, Patrick Millard and
Ernest Perry, plus Kenneth Martin, a distinguished maker of
constructions and kinetic work. Fellow students included
Michael Ayrton and John Minton, "very much admired by me,
Minton especially, and miles above my head", said Bell:
I remember feeling exceedingly flattered by seeing them
standing looking at a canvas of mine and Ayrton saying: "She
has a very good sense of tone. She might be the English
Utrillo one day." (The said canvas was not good, a mess, in
fact.)
Randall Bell's job took him around wartime England,
including Oxford, where their only child, Sebastian, was
born. Eileen was sympathetic when Sebastian wanted to study
music and he went on to become principal flautist with the
London Sinfonietta and to teach at the Royal Academy of
Music.
Back in London in 1947, Eileen Bell resumed her studies at
the Anglo-French Art Centre, which followed on from the
closed St John's Wood School. There, in addition to such
English teachers as Perry, she learned from noted
continental artists including Oskar Kokoschka and Jean
Lurçat.
She had joined the Artists International Association in 1939
and continued to show with it. Among her exhibitions was one
shared with the distinguished Scottish painter Anne Redpath,
as well as appearances at other notable London venues. These
included the Young Contemporaries, Leicester Galleries,
London Group and Royal Society of British Artists.
From the late 1950s until well into the 1960s Bell was a
visiting designer of house interiors with the Council of
Industrial Design. This included work for Woman magazine, a
couple of show-houses at the Ideal Home Exhibition,
wallpaper and textiles for Sanderson's, textiles for
Elizabeth Eaton Ltd, commissions for private clients and
interiors for the Lygon Arms at Broadway, in Worcestershire.
In 1967 Bell slipped on clay in the potting studio and broke
her arm, incapacitating her for a long time. As well as
crocheting rugs, she wrote two children's books for Puffin:
Tales from the End Cottage (1970) and More Tales from the
End Cottage (1972). They recalled Sebastian's childhood in
Northamptonshire and the animals where they lived.
Alan Titchmarsh, a student at the nearby Royal Botanical
Gardens in Kew, called on Eileen Bell in 1969 seeking digs.
This was a turning point in his life, as he recalled in his
2002 memoir, Trowel and Error, and his introduction to the
catalogue of her 2003 retrospective. As well as the cosy,
Bloomsbury-style environment, Titchmarsh enjoyed "wonderful
soups and stews, and her own brand of moussaka, and wine -
sometimes home-made (her oak leaf had a particularly
detrimental effect on the legs)".
Bell took him to the Wallace Collection, National Theatre,
Proms at the Albert Hall and concerts on the South Bank. "To
say that Eileen Bell was my main cultural influence during
my formative years is no exaggeration," "Titch", as he was
known to the Bells, wrote.
In the mid-1970s Eileen and Randall Bell settled in Suffolk,
first at Drinkstone, then nearby at Tostock, with visits to
Walberswick and Aldeburgh for painting inspiration. As well
as showing widely in the region, in 1989 she had a solo
exhibition at the Duncalfe Galleries in Harrogate,
introducing her work to a new and enthusiastic public.
Eventually, failing eyesight stopped Bell from painting, and
she lived finally in a care home in Leiston, Suffolk.
Christie's South Kensington plans a studio sale of her work
on 11 May.
David Buckman