Maud Raphael Jones
Stag on The Moor – 1886 – purchased 1986 Bradford Yorkshire, UK. Engagement present to TACM 1986
1863 – 1935
British 19th Century artist Maud Raphael Jones was a Bradford-born painter of landscape and rustic scenes.
Although his first name appears feminine, his birth details give his sex as male. In 2008, Maud’s grandson, Peter Jones, told a local journalist that Maud’s father had given him a girl’s name because:
He’d wanted a daughter and because his pals at a Bradford pub, where he called in on his way to the register office, bet him pints that he daren’t. But he did dare and eventually he arrived home … from the Barkerend pub rather the worse for wear. (‘Telegraph & Argus’ 1/3/2008).
Maud’s talents were initially channelled, along with many other working-class people with artistic ability, into work as a house-painter and decorator. However, he became a member of the Arcadian Art Club, which met in the Swan Arcade in Bradford. It is not known, as yet, if he received any formal artistic training. However, he displayed considerable artistic talent and his work was shown at a range of prestigious venues.
He exhibited work at the Royal Academy, the New Gallery, the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, Manchester Art Gallery, Glasgow Institute of Fine Art, and at both the Bradford and Leeds Art Gallery exhibitions. His painting ‘February’ (1887), shown below, hangs in the permanent collection at Cliffe Castle, Keighley.
Maud’s work sold well, and toward the end of his life, in the 1920s & 30s, was typically fetching between £500 – £600; a considerable sum in those days. He married and was the father of the successful local artist, Fred Cecil Jones.
Between 1889 and 1907 he exhibited at the Royal Academy, the New Gallery, the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours, the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and the Manchester City Art Gallery.
Frew, Margaret Eunice (nee Simms)
Margaret Eunice Frew (nee Simms) was born at the Highbury Vale Hospital Basford in Nottingham in the United Kingdom on the 18th of May 1940 to an artist mother and a motor mechanic father, Gwen and Eric Simms. He was abroad when she was born and she did not meet him until she was five years old and at school. Margaret came to Australia as a 17-year-old in 1957. She completed an Art Diploma course from 1978 to 1984 at Rossmoyne TAFE majoring in art history, design, painting and pottery. She discontinued oil painting, as she was allergic to the fumes from the oils and turpentine, switched to watercolours and pen and ink washes and has now focused on ceramics. She had a joint exhibition at Atwell House with her husband John Frew in 1982 and has been a member of the South of The River Potters, the Perth Potters Group, Canning Arts Group, Whiteman Park Potters and The Pothole. In 1988, she moved to Chidlow’s Well and set up the Village Potters Club which is still active today and was in several exhibitions with other potters between 1990 and 2003. Her mother did not give up pottery until she was 90 years old and nearly blind, and Margaret plans to still be potting at the same age. Her work is held in many private collections, including the Fairview Art Collection in Subiaco, Perth.