BELLINGHAM-SMITH, Elinor

1906 - 1988

Elinor Bellingham Smith was born in London on 28 December 1906, daughter of Guy Bellingham Smith (26 April 1865-19 April 1945), a surgeon and art collector, and his wife Ellen née Buxton (17 September 1867-1949), who married at Lewisham in 1901. In 1911, Elinor was a 4-year-old living at Fairfield, Birchington, Kent with her parents, 45-year-old Guy and 43-year-old Ellen and siblings, 9-year-old Oliver and 7-year-old Joan. Elinor studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London 1929-1931, under Henry Tonks (1862-1937). Elinor married at St Pancras, London on 26 December 1931, the painter Herbert George Rodrigo Moynihan (17 October 1910–6 November 1990), CBE, RA, whom she divorced in 1960, having one son John Moynihan, born in 1932. Elinor was a landscape artist who spent much of her later years painting the Suffolk countryside and, after her separation from Rodrigo Moynihan in 1957, she settled at 77 High Street, Bildeston, Suffolk from where she exhibited at the Royal Academy. Art critic David Sylvester (1924-2001) wrote that she was one of those English landscape painters who paints the weather and that she was able to find an equivalent on canvas for her experience of being alone in a flat country under a great canopy of sky. Her 'The Island' was exhibited at the Festival of Britain exhibition 'Sixty Paintings for 1951', where it won second prize and she exhibited regularly at the Leicester Galleries. Elinor Bellingham Smith died at Ipswich on 4 November 1988, aged 81. A retrospective exhibition of Elinor and Rodrigo's paintings was held at the Royal Academy in 1990 with paintings from the collection of their journalist son, John Moynihan.

Royal Academy Exhibits
from 77 High Street, Bildeston, Suffolk
1965 218 The Stour Marshes near Manningtree
         222 Frosty Afternoon: Brett Valley
         454 Listening to Radio Caroline
1966 32 The Friends
         860 Watching Television
         1337 Frosty Afternoon: The Brett Valley
1980 1058 Cobwebs
         1061 Early Morning
1982 86 The River
         126 Early Morning
1983 68 Two Trees
         646 The Bank
         654 Across the Fields
1985 648 The Bank
         656 Ploughed Field
1986 1090 Cornfield
1987 1304 Ploughed Field
1988 77 The Wild Rose
         423 The Ploughed Field

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Works by This Artist