GROOM, Mary Elizabeth

1903 - 1958

Mary Elizabeth Groom was born at Corringham, Essex on 17 December 1903, eldest daughter of John Bax Groom (1861-4 March 1931), a master mariner and German Vice Consul at Harwich, Essex, and his wife Charlotte Elizabeth Long (12 July 1869-3 March 1945), eldest daughter of Herbert Clarence Long of Corringham Old Hall, who married at Corringham on 12 October 1899. In 1911, Mary was a 7-year-old, living at Reydon Cottage, Wangford Road, Reydon, Southwold, Suffolk with her parents, 50-year-old John, who had retired, and 41-year-old Charlotte with five siblings, John Long 10 and William Herbert 8, both born in Calcutta, Anthony Jermyn 5, born at Corringham with Samuel Robert 4 and Lydia Rowena 2, both born at Reydon. Mary studied wood engraving at Brook Green School of Art along with Leon Underwood (1890-1975) with fellow-students such as Blair Hughes-Stanton, Gertrude Hermes (1901-1983) and Agnes Miller Parker (1895-1980). An artist and wood sculptor and a member and exhibitor at the Norfolk & Norwich Art Circle in 1953 from Wenhaston, Suffolk. Mary was part of the English Wood Engraving Society, a splinter-group of the Society of Wood Engravers and is best-remembered for her engravings for a 1937 edition of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' (Golden Cockerel Press 1937). Prints by Groom are held by the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, the British Museum and both the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Auckland Art Gallery in New Zealand also have examples of her work. In 1939, an artist, living at The Grange, Chediston, Halesworth with her widowed mother Charlotte and siblings William Henry (27 August 1902-1966), Anthony Jerman (born 14 April 1904) and George Thomas (31 October 1912-14 July 2006). Mary Elizabeth Groom was of The Old Mill, Wenhaston, Suffolk when she died at the Norfolk & Norwich Hospital, Norwich on 21 December 1958, aged 55, she was unmarried.

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Works by This Artist