Mary Elizabeth Groom (17 December 1903 – 21 December 1958) was a British artist, notable for her work as a printmaker and for the books she illustrated in the 1930s for the

Golden Cockerel Press The Golden Cockerel Press was an English fine press operating between 1920 and 1961. History The private press made handmade limited editions of classic works. The type was hand-set and the books were printed on handmade paper, and sometimes ...

Biography

Groom was born at Corringham in

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

to a master mariner and his wife. She studied under the influential printmaker

Claude Flight Walter Claude Flight (born London 16 February 1881 - died Donhead St Andrew 10 October 1955) also known as Claude Flight or W. Claude Flight was a British artist who pioneered and popularised the linoleum cut technique. He also painted, illustrated ...

at the

Grosvenor School of Modern Art The Grosvenor School of Modern Art was a private British art school An art school is an educational institution with a primary focus on the visual arts, including fine art – especially illustration, painting, photography, sculpture, and ...

before, in 1921, enrolling at

Leon Underwood George Claude Leon Underwood (25 December 1890 – 9 October 1975) was a British artist, although primarily known as a sculptor, printmaker and painter, he was also an influential teacher and promotor of African art. His travels in Mexico a ...

's Brook Green School to develop her skills as an engraver. Groom's prints featured areas of black outlined in white but with great attention to detail. In 1937 she produced two books for the

, an edition of ''

Paradise Lost ''Paradise Lost'' is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton (1608–1674). The first version, published in 1667, consists of ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse (poetry), verse. A second edition fo ...

'' by Milton and ''Roses of Sharon'', a collection of

Old Testament The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...

verses. Groom was a member of the

Society of Wood Engravers The Society of Wood Engravers (SWE) is a UK-based artists’ exhibiting society, formed in 1920, one of its founder-members being Eric Gill. It was originally restricted to artist-engravers printing with oil-based inks in a press, distinct from ...

, exhibiting some 18 prints with them, and also of a breakaway group, the English Wood Engraving Society. For many years she lived at

Southwold Southwold is a seaside town and civil parish on the English North Sea coast in the East Suffolk district of Suffolk. It lies at the mouth of the River Blyth within the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The town is a ...

before moving to

Wenhaston Wenhaston is a village situated to the south of the River Blyth in northeastern Suffolk, England. In 2018 it had an estimated population of 563. History Roman coins, pottery and building materials unearthed in local fields indicate the existenc ...

in Suffolk, which was still her home when she died in 1958 in

Norwich Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. Norwich is by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. As the seat of the See of Norwich, with ...

. Fourteen prints by Groom are held by the

Ashmolean Museum The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology () on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is Britain's first public museum. Its first building was erected in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave to the University of ...

in Oxford and both 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 ...

in London and the

Auckland Art Gallery Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki is the principal public gallery in Auckland, New Zealand. It has the most extensive collection of national and international art in New Zealand and frequently hosts travelling international exhibitions. Set be ...

in New Zealand also have examples of her work, while 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 ...

collection includes two of her prints.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Groom, Mary Elizabeth 1903 births 1958 deaths 20th-century English painters 20th-century English women artists Alumni of the Grosvenor School of Modern Art English illustrators English women painters People from Corringham, Essex