Ornament with Sybil Tawse signature
Sybil Tawse
Lithographs and paintings of biographical interest

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See additional lithographs and artwork in Painted Pottery Design and other paintings.


Cheyne Walk Chelsea - Sybil Tawse

After Gloucester Road, London Kensington, in 1918 Miss Tawse
moved to 44 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. This coloured lithograph is
entitled 'Cheyne Walk — Chelsea' (top corner areas retouched).

The old Church Chelsea - Sybil Tawse

'The Old Church — Chelsea' is another coloured lithograph she painted.

Castle Hill Cambridge - Sybil Tawse

'Castle Hill — Cambridge' is another well-known coloured lithograph
Miss Tawse painted, suggesting that she will have stayed there.

Cairo 1929 - Sybil Tawse

This watercolour is entitled Cairo. Miss Tawse was
listed to sail to Port Said, Egypt, in February 1924.

Bath - 1932 - Sybil Tawse

Watercolour of Bath by Sybil Tawse, signed and dated Easter 1932.

Cranford-signed-1933-Sybil-Tawse

The title page of Cranford signed and dated "Chelsea 6.xii.33."

St James Bath 1946 - Sybil Tawse

The Victoria Art Gallery–Bath notes that Sybil Tawse was in Bath during
the war and painted street scenes while she was living there.
The gallery has this 1942 watercolour entitled St. James' After the Raids.

Abbey Churchyard 1946 - Sybil Tawse

The Victoria Art Gallery–Bath also has this finely-detailed watercolour
entitled The Colonnade and Abbey Churchyard, Bath from 1946.

The two photos above courtesy Jim Riseley, Victoria Art Gallery,
Bath & North East Somerset Council, thank you.


Bath - 1932 - Sybil Tawse

Watercolour of Bath by Sybil Tawse, signed and dated 1942.
A hand-written label on the back of the painting says that Miss Tawse had paintings exhibited nineteen times between 1925 and 1940, four times at the Royal Academy.

Landscape Near Bath 1945 - Sybil Tawse

Watercolour by Sybil Tawse signed and dated 17.VIII.45,
inscribed on the back "Landscape Near Bath - 1945".

Portrait of Frederick Alford 1956 - Sybil Tawse

Portrait of Charles Frederick Alford, London 1956.
The composition, technique, and use of colour are characteristic of Miss Tawse's work. Professor Alford said about the work the most important thing a portrait can achieve: "I was a serious boy, not particularly happy overall, but alert and curious, and I think she captures that in her painting. It's true to my inner-life, as well as my appearance."
C. Fred Alford is Professor Emeritus and a distinguished scholar and author at the University of Maryland — about nine years old in the painting. Professor Alford is one of the very few the persons now living who saw Miss Tawse in life, sitting for the portrait.
I recently saw a post on Facebook by another individual in Scotland
who sat for Miss Tawse as a child and was trying to find the painting.

Earlsferry Fife - Sybil Tawse

A watercolour of Earlsferry, Fife signed by Sybil Tawse and dated 6-IX-58.
Below a street-view of the same location today.

Earlsferry Fife




 
Sybil-Tawse-British-Artists-1929 Sybil-Tawse-British-Artists-1929
 

Sybil Tawse in A Dictionary of Contemporary British artists, 1929 by Bernard Dolman, Art Trade Press, London, 1929.

TAWSE, (Miss) Sybil; book illustrator, portrait painter, decorative and poster artist. Educ Lambeth School; R.C.A. (King's prize scholar, silver and bronze medallist). Ezhbd at R.A., Brighton Art Gallery. Works reproduced illustrations for "Cranford," Kingsley's "Heroes" and "The Fairchild Family" (Messrs. A. & C. Black), "Miss Esperance and Mr. Wycherley" (John Murray). Address 44 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, SW3. Signs work "Sybil Tawse"



 
  McGinley-Sixpence-01-Sybil-Tawse   McGinley-Sixpence-02-Sybil-Tawse
 

Miss Tawse enjoyed many reviews in magazines and newspapers, which I do not represent in this gallery. This, on the other hand, is an appreciation of her work in a book by Phyllis McGinley (1905–1978), the American author of children's books and poetry who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1961. Sixpence in Her Shoe is a book of practical advice for American women first published in 1960.

"The other object of my devotion, and an even more persistent influence, was a set of pictures. Again, I discovered them young. Have you ever read a book called Cranford? Probably you have, since its title occurs regularly on high-school reading lists. I, the product of an excessively bad education, had never heard of it until I routed it out of a glass-fronted bookcase when I was recovering from something unoriginal like a midwinter. But it contained eight full-page color plates by a certain Miss Sybil Tawse. (I am not being formal. That's the ladylike way she signed herself.) The plates were watercolor illustrations of rooms, the rooms in a Cranford Rectory. There were careful delineations of Tudor cabinets, Queen Anne wing chairs, country Chippendale stands, gate-legged tables, cupboards full of blue willowware, embroidered fire screens, pierced brass fenders. I think Miss Tawse meant her pictures to look quaint, old-fashioned in a heterogeneous fashion, as if Cranford people never threw out anything but simply assembled and inherited. To me they were representations of pure delight. I carried the book as well as the yearning for old furnishings with me into my own first home. And I did my best to gather about me pieces as much like Cranford ones as possible."

 

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