GARRETT, Elsie

1869 - 1959

Elsie Garrett was born at The Rectory, Church Street, Elton, Derbyshire on 25 November 1869, twin with John Herbert Garrett (25 November 1869-20 September 1923), children of Revd John Fisher Garrett (c.1803-21 November 1878), rector of Elton, who was born at Bramfield, Suffolk, and his second wife Mary née Gray, who was born at Grantham, Lincolnshire in 1831, and married at St Andrew, Rugby on 10 April 1860, his first wife was Elizabeth Henzer Pidcock (21 February 1812-18 October 1853) who married at Elton on 16 January 1836. Elsie, with her twin brother John Herbert, were baptised at Elton on 16 January 1870 and in 1871, Elsie was living at Elton Rectory with her parents, 67-year-old John and 39-year-old Mary, with her three siblings, Mary Amy 8, Fydell Edmund 5 and John Herbert 1. Elsie studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London and in Florence, before teaching at Bedales School, which was founded by her brother-in-law John Badley (1865-1967), who had married in 1892 her sister Mary Amy and, like her Garrett relations, Elsie was active in the suffragette movement. In 1894 she was advertising her sketching classes in Ipswich and Felixstowe and was a landscape and portrait painter in oil and watercolour, and a member of the Ipswich Fine Art Club 1895-1896 and exhibited a total of nine works from St Helen's Lodge, Ipswich. The subjects included local views such as a watercolour in 1895 ‘On the Gipping’ and in 1896 an oil ‘Willie Lott’s Cottage’ and watercolours 'On the Stour early Morning' and 'Spring'. She married at East Preston, Sussex in 1898, Charles Emmanuel Rice (1865-1949), headmaster of King Alfred's School, Hampstead, and in 1901 Elsie was a schoolteacher, living at 3 Garden Flat, Fitzjohns Avenue, Hampstead, London with her family. By 1911, now Elsie Garrett Rice, a 41-year-old art teacher, living at Steep Cote, Hampshire with her husband, 45-year-old schoolteacher Charles, and two children, Gabriel Edmund 11 and Agnes Rosemary 10, both born at Hampstead. Elsie, estranged from her husband, emigrated to South Africa in 1933 and was living at Rondebosch and later lived at Camps Bay with her daughter Rosemary Agnes Hawthorne and son-in-law Dr Charles Barnard Hawthorne, who married at Coventry in 1923, and emigrated to the Cape in 1934. Elsie Garrett Rice died at Cape Town, South Africa on 27 April 1959. She illustrated 'Wild Flowers of The Cape of Good Hope' (1951).

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Works by This Artist