Jessie Holliday (5 February 1884 – 17 June 1915) was an English artist and

suffragette A suffragette was a member of an activist women's organisation in the early 20th century who, under the banner "Votes for Women", fought for the right to vote in public elections in the United Kingdom. The term refers in particular to members ...

Life

Holliday's father was Henry Holliday and mother, Eliza Matilda Denman. He was Secretary of the Iron and Steel Company. Aged thirteen, she went to the Quaker school, Polam Hall, for three years. She then entered the Cope & Nichols school of painting at South Kensington. There she developed a talent for drawing and painting receiving a silver medal for drawing. From 1903 to 1906 she was at the Royal Academy School of art. She returned to the Royal Academy School between 1906 and 1908 for a second term. Holliday married Edmund Trowbridge Dana, a grandson of the poet

Longfellow Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. His original works include "Paul Revere's Ride", ''The Song of Hiawatha'', and ''Evangeline''. He was the first American to completely transl ...

, in 1912.

Artistic career

The following year she began to portraiture in earnest, tackling many important socialist figures and leading thinkers. Amongst them were Clifford Allen,

Hugh Dalton Edward Hugh John Neale Dalton, Baron Dalton, (16 August 1887 – 13 February 1962) was a British Labour Party economist and politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1945 to 1947. He shaped Labour Party foreign policy in the 1 ...

, Dr Somerville Hastings, the Labour MP for Reading, P.S. Florence, the statistician, and Lady Constance Lytton, the leading militant suffragette. She went on to include as her sitters

George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...

, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, and Blank Whites. She became a leading light of the early Summer School Movement at which Fabian intellectuals gathered. Holliday supported the Food Reform Movement; part of which was her own personal contribution by becoming a vegetarian. At the time of her move to American she was a well known as a watercolourist and for her drawings.

Death

Holliday committed suicide by drowning at Cliff Beach, Nantucket on 17 June 1915, aged thirty-one years. She was survived by her husband, Edmund Trowbridge Dana, and her baby son.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Holliday, Jessie 1884 births 1915 deaths English portrait painters 20th-century English painters 1915 suicides Suicides by drowning in the United States English women painters Suicides in Massachusetts 20th-century women painters