Edith Mary Hinchley, born Edith Mary Mason (1870 – 16 October 1940) was a
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
painter, suffragist, and humanist.
Biography
Hinchley was born in 1870 in the
Chelsea
Chelsea or Chelsey may refer to:
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* Chelsea, Victoria
Canada
* Chelsea, Nova Scotia
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United Kingdom
* Chelsea, London, an area of London, bounded to the south by the River Thames
** Chelsea (UK Parliament consti ...
area of London where her father was a florist and nurseryman and her mother and sisters ran a shop. Her father died in the 1880s and by the 1890s Hinchley was a student at the
Royal College of Art
The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It offe ...
, where she won a silver medal.
From 1897 to 1928 Hinchley showed some 27 works at the
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its pur ...
in London and also with the
Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts
The Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts (RGI) is an independent organisation in Glasgow, founded in 1861, which promotes contemporary art and artists in Scotland. The institute organizes the largest and most prestigious annual art exhibitio ...
, the
Royal Hibernian Academy
The Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) is an artist-based and artist-oriented institution in Ireland, founded in Dublin in 1823. Like many other Irish institutions, such as the RIA, the academy retained the word "Royal" after most of Ireland became in ...
and in Liverpool and at the
Paris Salon
The Salon (french: Salon), or rarely Paris Salon (French: ''Salon de Paris'' ), beginning in 1667 was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Between 1748 and 1890 it was arguably the greatest annual or biennial art ...
.
She was elected a member of the
Royal Society of Miniature Painters in 1896 and to the
Society of Women Artists
The Society of Women Artists (SWA) is a British art body dedicated to celebrating and promoting fine art created by women. It was founded as the Society of Female Artists (SFA) in about 1855, offering women artists the opportunity to exhibit and ...
in 1922.
In 1890 she worked on a family tree that involved the creation of 500 heraldic shields on deerskin.
[ She is credited with doing the work because she was a genealogist and a friend of the family concerned. The ''Lucy Deerskin'' is held at ]Charlecote Park
Charlecote Park () is a grand 16th-century country house, surrounded by its own deer park, on the banks of the River Avon in Charlecote near Wellesbourne, about east of Stratford-upon-Avon and south of Warwick, Warwickshire, England. It has be ...
in Warwickshire and owned by the National Trust
The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...
. The heraldry used has been investigated by Christoper Purvis and nearly all of the arms had been identified by 2012.
In 1903 she married the chemical engineer John William Hinchley who she had met whilst at the Royal College of Art
The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It offe ...
in London. She had studied art and she had some difficulty because not only was her hearing not perfect but she was obliged to sit at the back of the class because she was a woman. She could not move forward as there was a matron employed to chaperone the female students and who sat between the genders. Her husband left in 1903 for Siam
Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 mi ...
where he was to be the assayist at the Bangkok mint. She sailed out to join him in 1904, where she painted, and they returned to Britain in 1907.
In 1911 Hinchley spoke up for women artists, noting that they had quickly responded to the needs of the suffrage movement. Her article was published in the newspaper of Women's Freedom League
The Women's Freedom League was an organisation in the United Kingdom which campaigned for women's suffrage and sexual equality
Gender equality, also known as sexual equality or equality of the sexes, is the state of equal ease of access ...
which was called ''The Vote''. The Women's Freedom League was a militant suffrage movement that had splintered from the Pankhursts seeking more democracy.
In 1913 Hinchley donated three embroidered robes to the Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...
. They were from North Africa and one was silk.
In 1923 Hinchley was commissioned to paint a miniature of Princess Helene Victoria which was to be hung in the library of Queen Mary's Dolls' House
Queen Mary's Dolls' House is a dollhouse built in the early 1920s, completed in 1924, for Queen Mary, the wife of King George V. It was designed by architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, with contributions from many notable artists and craftsmen of the ...
. The painting is still extant and may be painted on vellum.
Her husband, who was a leading chemical engineer and freemason, died on 13 August 1931.[ In 1935 she began to donate antiquities to the ]British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
. The objects included metal coins and porcelain items dating back as far as 150 BCE.
In 1937 or 1938 she painted Evan Frederick Morgan, 4th Baron, 2nd Viscount Tredegar. This painting is in the National Trust collection.
Death and legacy
Hinchley died in London in 1940. Her house, in Kensington
Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in the West End of London, West of Central London.
The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up b ...
, was completely destroyed by a bomb during The Blitz
The Blitz was a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom in 1940 and 1941, during the Second World War. The term was first used by the British press and originated from the term , the German word meaning 'lightning war'.
The Germa ...
; her body and that of her two lodgers were not found until five days later, when notices were run to establish who may be beneficiaries of her estate. She has a painting in the Wellcome Collection
Wellcome Collection is a museum and library based at 183 Euston Road, London, displaying a mixture of medical artefacts and original artworks exploring "ideas about the connections between medicine, life and art". Founded in 2007, the Wellcome C ...
titled a ''Leper in Prapatoom'' which she completed in 1905.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hinchley, Edith Mary
1870 births
1940 deaths
19th-century English women artists
20th-century English women artists
Alumni of the Royal College of Art
British civilians killed in World War II
Deaths by airstrike during World War II
English women painters
English humanists
English suffragists
Heraldic artists
Painters from London
People from Chelsea, London