WATT, Amy Millar

1900 - 1956

As Amy Maulby Biggs, she was born at Plymouth, Devon in 1900, daughter of Charles Maulby Biggs (1867-1939) and his wife Emily Pascoe née Barrett (6 December 1857-5 February 1945), who married at St Jude's Church, Plymouth on 19 April 1897. During 1901-1911, Amy was living with her mother at her uncle's home in Plymouth, firstly at 22 South Devon Place and in 1911 at 5 Brandreth Road. She studied at Plymouth College of Art under Fred. Shelley and then at St Martin's School of Art where she met her future husband John Millar Watt, who attended the same evening classes and they both worked for advertising agencies as staff artists. In 1921 Amy was an 'art student designer' boarding at 66 Fortune Green Road, Hampstead, London and she married in 1923 and moved to Dedham, Essex where they designed and built a modern house and studio overlooking Dedham Vale, to where Alfred Munnings and his wife Violet, were frequent visitors. Amy devoted her energies to a considerable output of landscape and flower paintings, using a sense of colour, design and often scale, that was self-assuredly modern, yet worked out on traditional lines. A member of the Ipswich Art Club 1926-1935, but had exhibited in 1923 'Elizabethan Window' and exhibiting from The Studio, Dedham, Essex in 1927, six works oils 'Rhododendrons', 'Mary in the Garden', 'Primulas', 'Country Bunch', 'Felgate's Farm' and watercolour 'The Arbutus Tree' and in 1933 as Mrs J. Millar Watt from Corner House, Dedham, three oils 'Autumn Bunch', 'Tulips' and 'Blue and Silver'. About 1935 she moved to St Ives, Cornwall, taking the Chy-an-Chy Studio overlooking the harbour. She exhibited 19 works at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions 1929-1953, the five exhibits 1938-1939 were all St Ives harbour scenes, also exhibiting at the Paris Salon, gaining an honourable mention, also showing in local shows in Suffolk, Essex, and St Ives. In 1939 the Watts moved briefly to Crediton, Devon but returned to St Ives during the Second World War after which, she and her husband, made their home at Chelsea. Amy Maulby Millar Watts was of 8 Walton Street, Chelsea when she died at St Thomas's Hospital, Lambeth, London on 28 December 1956.

Royal Academy Exhibits
from The Studio, Dedham
1929 199 Autumn Bouquet
1930 225 Tulips
1931 519 Summer Bouquet
         683 Wild Flowers
         857 June Roses
1934 509 Wild Flowers
from Trenoweth, St Ives, Cornwall
1938 403 Harbour Scene
         556 The Wharf
from Trowbridge, Crediton, Devon
1939 397 The Plat, St Ives
         426 Harbour Scene
         553 The Harbour
from St Ives, Cornwall
1946 597 Essex Landscape
from 8 Walton Street, Chelsea, Southwest London
1947 368 Wild Flowers
1949 40 Tulips
1950 150 Autumn Flowers
1951 318 Lilies
1952 167 Flowers
         814 Landscape: Tarragona
1953 516 Regale Lily and Orchids

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Works by This Artist