Beatrice Offer

Beatrice Offer (1864-1920) was an early student at the Slade School, whose artworks display the Slade's hallmarks of confident figure drawing and broad, expressive painting.

A rediscovered selection of her works is currently on show at Bruce Castle Museum, Tottenham, close to where Offer lived with her second husband,  businessman and local councillor. They were found in storage by curator Deborah Hedgecock and prepared for exhibition in 2020, now open until the end of 2021.

Beatrice Offer Love Potion [detail] Bruce Castle Museum

The most striking are single female figures with a compelling gaze and darkly suggestive settings, often seen by candle- or fire-light. In one untitled piece, a witch with pointy hat and broomstick is glimpsed behind a seated girl. In  A Melody a shadowy head appears behind a harpist, recalling Julia Cameron's Whisper of the Muse.  In A Love Potion, fumes rise from the goblet of a sorceress, who reclines on a leopard skin [a stock studio prop] with a live bloodhound at her feet, in an unusual horizontal composition.  

The Crystal Gazer shows the eponymous subject with a future-telling globe.  She wears a green garland and offers the viewer a direct, inviting expression.     So far, so 1890s, with a good dose of pictorial occultism, suitable for the era of W B Yeats.  The works are accomplished and bold, commanding attention across the room, several with a Rossettian air - trademarks being wide eyes, parted lips, tumbling hair.  The brushwork is fluid and stylishly loose especially on the drapery.

Beatrice Offer 

Esme Dancing, Bruce Castle collection

as is seen in Esme Dancing [Esme's real life identity unknown] which is SO Edwardian and surely referencing Isadora Duncan.    There's a portrait of novelist Ouida, presumably drawn from photos, and a very interesting image of Hedda Gabler .   

Beatrice Offer, Auntie's Best Bonnet, Bruce Castle coll.

Not well reproduced in my snapshot, and not obviously Ibsen's rebellious heroine from its title 'Auntie's Best Bonnet'.  Deborah successfully linked image and title through this quote, which is Hedda's contemptuous judgement on the new hat belonging to her husband's aunt Julia, which Hedda deliberately mis-calls an old bonnet owned by the housekeeper. In Offer's painting, Hedda holds the album of photographs over which she revives her relationship with Eilert Lovborg, recalling times spent by 'we two on the corner sofa'.

First produced in London in 1891, the play was regularly revived between 1903 and 1911, notably with Mrs Patrick Campbell in the title role.

Offer's personal life was tragic: two sons died in babyhood and her first husband, a sculptor, died soon afterwards in a lunatic asylum.  To support herself Beatrice successfully turned to drawing decorative 'fancy heads' for commercial reproduction in glossy magazines, and then, perhaps for consolation, to devotional paintings.   A breakdown at age 55 preceded a suicidal leap from her bedroom window.  More biographical details from  #(94) (DOC) Beatrice Offor Artist 1864-1920 | Alan Walker - Academia.edu

Emily Sargent

Emily Sargent view in Capri, n.d. Pitman Gift, Ashmolean Museum

 Sister to the more famous John Singer  -  how often is this sort of comment used in respect of women's art?  A small exhibition containing watercolours by Emily Sargent (1857-1936) is on display at the Broadway Museum, before transferring to the Ashmolean.  This nicely-chosen street view in Capri is one included, demonstrating the artist's accomplishment.

There's some degree of cant about the familiar lament regarding 'neglected' or 'forgotten' women artists, as if posterity were to blame.  But some [not all] did not seek attention, much less 'fame' or recognition.  They drew and painted for the satisfaction of so doing. If they exhibited, it was often in connection with some charitable endeavour, much like the embroideries and babies' knitwear contributed by others.    Emily Sargent was surely one such artist.

At the same time, she did not neglect or forget her artworks. It appears that some hundreds survive.  This group belonged to a member of her family, as did 37 others recently presented to Tate Britain [not yet online].