Marguerite Kelsey (11 January 1909 – 5 March 1995) was a British

model A model is an informative representation of an object, person or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin ''modulus'', a measure. Models c ...

for artists. She appears in notable works of art by Meredith Frampton, Dame

Laura Knight Dame Laura Knight ( Johnson; 4 August 1877 – 7 July 1970) was an English artist who worked in oils, watercolours, etching, engraving and drypoint. Knight was a painter in the figurative, realist tradition, who embraced English Impressi ...

, and Peter Edwards.

Life

Kelsey was born in 1909 in London and by the age of fifteen she had started her career as an artist's model. In 1928 she modeled for Meredith Frampton is a dress and shoes supplied by the artist. She was renowned for her ability to hold a pose for a long time and in this case she appeared without a corset in the fashionable style known as "Las Garconne". This painting is now in the

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

museum in London and it has been described as the "epitome of modern classicism". In 1937 she modeled again for Frampton and as a result he painted her with cards as "A Game of Patience". She spent two decades in New Zealand and return to the United Kingdom in the early 1980s suffering with arthritis. In 1993, Peter Edwards exhibited in The Portrait Now show. In 1994 he won the

BP Portrait Award The BP Portrait Award is an annual portraiture competition held at the National Portrait Gallery in London, England. It is the successor to the John Player Portrait Award. It is the most important portrait prize in the world, and is reputedly ...

with ''Portrait of an Artist's Model'' (of Marguerite Kelsey) who was then in her eighties. Kelsey died in

High Wycombe High Wycombe, often referred to as Wycombe ( ), is a market town in Buckinghamshire, England. Lying in the valley of the River Wye, Buckinghamshire, River Wye surrounded by the Chiltern Hills, it is west-northwest of Charing Cross in London, ...

in 1995.

Personal life

She married James Grant in 1935 and in 1961 she married Charles Barry.

Legacy

Kelsey appears in paintings by noted artists including, Sir

William Reid Dick Sir William Reid Dick, (13 January 1878 – 1 October 1961) was a Scottish sculptor known for his innovative stylisation of form in his monument sculptures and simplicity in his portraits. He became an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1921, a ...

Augustus John Augustus Edwin John (4 January 1878 – 31 October 1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sarge ...

, Dame

Ethel Walker Dame Ethel Walker (9 June 1861 – 2 March 1951) was a Scottish painter of portraits, flower-pieces, sea-pieces and decorative compositions. From 1936, Walker was a member of The London Group. Her work displays the influence of Impressionism, Puv ...

, Sir

John Lavery Sir John Lavery (20 March 1856 – 10 January 1941) was a Northern Irish painter best known for his portraits and wartime depictions. Life and career John Lavery was born in inner North Belfast, baptised at St Patrick's Church, Belfast an ...

, and Dame

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kelsey, Marguerite 1909 births 1995 deaths Models from London English artists' models