News

An Unknown Artist

By Martina Hildebrandt

The RGA has very nearly 100 years of history, with thousands of artists, so it is unsurprising that we get enquiries about past members or a painting someone has inherited or bought. Some enquiries are straight-forward where we can provide some biographical details and perhaps trackdown a painting in our catalogues.

But it was on this occasion, when an enquiry about a past member came from the Aldermaston History Group, that it was an artist we knew very little about. Indeed at that point it turned out that they knew more about her than we did, pointing us to a work on the ArtUK website, Portrait of a Woman.

The artist’s name was not known to the RGA – a bit of detective work was needed!

Portrait of a Woman was painted by Marie Florence Chant in 1946 while studying at the Slade School of Art (the first to admit women students). The title is more a description of the work rather than a title given by the artist, and whilst the sitter is unknown, she was most likely to have been a fellow student as it is known that they would often sit for each other. The painting won the second prize in the Head Painting category as part of the Slade Prize system and was added to their collection. 

Born in Rugby in 1917, Marie Chant’s father George was killed in action in Flanders before she was even four months old. Her mother Alice soon remarried, and along with a half-sister the new family continued to live in the same family house in Rugby. 

At the start of the Second World War, Marie worked as a “Commercial Clerk in Engineering”, but newspaper cuttings show her to be an active member of the Rugby and District Art Society, exhibiting with the group several times at the local library. 

Marie entered the Slade in January 1945 at the age of 27. The Slade had be evacuated to the Ruskin School, Oxford at the beginning of the war, and this is where she started her studies, completing them back in London 1947-48. She was the recipient of several more Slade Prizes, with a First for Design including textiles and book jackets. 

She was an assistant in a research laboratory in Rugby when she met her future husband, an optical scientist, and they married in 1948. Her husband was appointed to work for Associated Electrical Industries (AEI), at its plasma research laboratory at Aldermaston Court. Living in former army quarters in the grounds of the Court, we know from her husband’s biography that Marie “played a full part in village life, helping the Vicar at and the W.I. with art classes for wives and children”. 

Indeed the Aldermaston History Group’s interest in Marie lay in that “Aldermaston is specially in her debt: in its 12th-century church, St Mary the Virgin, were four ancient hatchments which were by then in very poor condition. There was also a very rare painting of a coat of arms of Charles I which had been stowed away secretly from Cromwellian eyes. Marie restored these fine specimens to their original glowing colours where they now enhance the walls of the nave.”

When the couple moved to Cockney Hill, Tilehurst, Marie was designing fabrics and wallpapers, having work reproduced in a number of magazines including Vogue and House and Garden.  

It was in 1959 that Marie joined the Reading Guild of Artists and was soon making her presence felt when at the AGM in 1960 this “relatively new and unknown member” accused the Guild “of doing far too little for its members compared with what other societies managed to do. It needed a ‘shot in the arm’; and it certainly received one.” as is recorded by EV Watson’s A History of the Reading Guild of Artists 1930-1980. She was well experienced at what other art societies offered having been a member of the Rugby and District Art Society and exhibiting alongside Alan Caiger-Smith and Christopher Hall with the Padworth and Aldermaston group.

Described by fellow artist Jack Orford as having “indefatigable zest, initiative and enthusiasm, which not surprisingly found its reflection and response in all those around her. Amongst the events for which she was the moving force were the Fancy Dress Annual Parties, of which many of us who took part have happy memories. The Abbey Gateway parties will also be remembered by many as very enjoyable occasions. Some splendid outdoor sketching days, followed by set teas and chats over the work produced during the day, were also planned, organised and run by her.” The latter a forerunner to the Summer Painting Days the RGA now hosts. 

Our catalogues show that she mainly exhibited oil paintings of landscapes, portraits and still-life, but also worked in gouache, watercolour and lithograph, although no examples of these are known to exist. 

Our History, however, goes on to say, “At a Council meeting on 29 October 1966 the disquieting news was heard that Marie had been ill for about a year.” 

“Her condition did not improve, and in June 1967, very tragically, she died. Thus the Guild stood bereft not only of its brightest spirit but of an outstanding innovator whose initiative and enthusiasm had in large measure been instrumental in transforming the very nature of our society – and this all in the short period of less than seven years. It was a most grievous blow”. 

She was aged just 49. 

“Happily her memory is kept alive for members of the present day, and the future, by virtue of the Marie Dyson Award…”

For Marie Florence Chant, an artist it was said to be of “considerable merit, and was engaged in printing, drawing, lithography and in textile design, for which branch of art she became widely known” is the Marie Dyson of the RGA Award in her name. Founded 1967 by her husband Dr James Dyson FRS and a group of friends, it is presented at the Annual Exhibition for a piece of work judged to be of outstanding merit by an invited assessor. Today’s generation of RGA members knew nothing of her life or work. Seemly only to be known within the RGA archives as Mrs Marie Dyson, the name Marie Chant was never mentioned.  The link between Marie Florence Chant, an artist listed in the Artists in Britain Since 1945 by David Buckman, with Marie Dyson of the RGA has been missed over the years. 

It had always seemed a little odd how little we knew of her. Perhaps at the time of her death everyone was well aware of her work and enthusiasm and it is over time no one thought to record any details of it for the future. We are now correcting this oversight. A fuller biography of Marie Dyson is being compiled. If you do have any further information about the artist and her work please contact our Archivist.

The recipients of the Marie Dyson Award since 1968 can be found on the RGA website. 

With many thanks to Julia Cox from the Aldermaston History Group, and Lucy Waitt at UCL Art Museum, University College London for all their help in finding Marie.