GOWEN, Aline Elizabeth

1907 - 1999

As Aline Elizabeth Wooldridge, she was born at Blean, Kent on 28 July 1907, eldest daughter of Maurice Wooldridge (26 July 1867-15 March 1951), a farmer, and his wife Elizabeth Mary née Foster (18 September 1876-7 November 1970), who married at Wandsworth, London in 1906. In 1911, Aline was a 3-year-old, living at Hoath Court, Heath, near Canterbury, Kent with her parents, 44-year-old Maurice and 34-year-old Elizabeth and a younger brother, 1-year-old Geoffrey. Aline studied at the Regent Street Polytechnic and first worked as a glass designer in London, and then designed and painted textiles and lampshades for a Norwegian company. She married at Peldon Parish Church, Colchester, Essex in March 1936, Kenneth Arthur Land Gowen (6 October 1905-22 October 1977), a master sailmaker, and in 1939 they were living at White Chimneys, Bower Hill Chase, West Mersea, Essex. It was not until after the Second World War that she started painting more seriously taking a painting course run by Eric Arnold Roberts Ennion at the Flatford Mill Centre. Aline, now painting under the name of Aline Gowen, specialised in watercolours and exhibited at the Royal Academy and was a member and exhibitor at the Ipswich Art Club from 1952 and her watercolour 'The Potato Pickers' was exhibited at the centenary exhibition in 1974 and she exhibited from West Hall Chase, 8 High Street, West Mersea, Essex in 1979, two pictures 'Sunflowers (Autumn Glory)' and 'Water Lilies' and the following year 'The Twisted Willow' and 'Olive Tree, Corfu', she also showed in East Anglia and the provinces. Aline married secondly at North Dorset in 1980, John A. Davies after which she sometimes painted under the name Gowen-Davies. Aline Elizabeth Davies died at Colchester, Essex in 1999.


Royal Academy Exhibits
from Specks Farm, Lamarsh, Bures, Suffolk
1961 873 A Farm Pond in Winter
         908 Overy Staithe, Norfolk

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Works by This Artist