Juliet Kathleen Pannett, MBE (1911-2005)

[Michael Rhodes]

The portrait painter Juliet Pannett, MBE, died at the Darlington Court
Nursing Home, Rustington, 22 August, 2005, aged 94.

http://www.npg.org.uk/live/wopannett.asp

http://www.askart.com/artist/P/juliet_pannett.asp?ID=113950

Juliet Kathleen Pannett was born at Hove in 1911 and was one of the
oldest living artists to have work in the National Portrait Gallery
collection. Throughout her long and prolific career she recorded the
faces of the great and good including many Prime Ministers,
politicians, lawyers, judges, academics and musicians.

Pannett studied at Brighton College of Art in the 1920s and received
her first portrait commission at the age of eighteen from Sussex County
Magazine. She was employed to travel around the county drawing local
characters, from blacksmiths and rabbit catchers to horse-cab drivers
and Crimean war-veterans.

In 1934 Pannett was elected a member of the Society of Graphic Artists
and began teaching at a girl's school near Crawley. She acquired her
first studio in a mews in Hove and began her foreign travels with trips
to Spain, Germany and Italy; a passion that was to last a lifetime.
Forced to give up painting at the beginning of the Second World War,
Pannett returned to it with enthusiasm in subsequent years and from
1957-64 was Special Artist to the Illustrated London News.

In 1989, at the age of 78, Pannett was commissioned to paint Queen
Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. She exhibited at the Royal Academy
and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and was awarded an MBE in
1993.

She was mother of a son, Denis and a daughter, Elizabeth, and had a
granddaughter, Belinda.

The cremation takes place at Worthing Crematorium on Friday, 9th
September 2005.

Source: The Times 27 Aug 2005

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