KECHIE TENNENT, ARTIST & MOTHER, 1888-1968

Kechie was a brilliant painter of English and Bavarian landscapes in watercolour. After training at the Slade 1912-14, she worked primarily in the periods 1920-33 and 1950-65. In between she devoted herself almost wholly to her brothers child, Anne Tennent, who she and her husband adopted in 1933 following the death of Annes mother in Malaya. Although Kechie and her husband lived in north Norfolk, they also spent time with friends in Bavaria, southern Germany, where the landscape inspired her early paintings below:

Rain: Munich. 1931. Watercolour and pencil on paper. 57 x 47 cms.

Munich, capital of Bavaria and the birthplace of the Nazi party in 1920, was only 20 miles north of where Kechie and her husband stayed with their friends Theodore & Erika Leonhardi at Tutzing on the Sternberger Lake (below).

Bavarian landscape; Starnberger Lake. 1923. Watercolour on paper. 34 x 42 cms. Kechie was born in Penang, Malaya, where her father, Charles Tennent, was in business, at that time working as a broker for Lewis & Peat of London. Her mother, Marion Ethel Edwards, came from a Welsh family who were then based at Blackheath in London. Kechie was christened Emma Marie, the eldest of eight children, but was known throughout her life by her Malayan nick-name Kechie, meaning small. On returning home to England the family settled near her mothers home at Blackheath. It was here she later met her future husband, Claughton Pellew, the elder son of a neighbouring family, who was attending the Slade School of Art (1907-11). It seems he encouraged her talent to such good effect that she later trained at the Slade (1912-14). There she studied alongside Christine Khlenthal who in 1918 married John Nash, a lifelong friend of Claughtons. The intimate story of these young artists, wonderfully gifted, growing up and then suddenly caught up and divided by the miseries of the First World War, and eventually finding their own paths, is vividly told in Ronald Blythes book First Friends . From 1916 Kechie spent two years as an auxiliary nurse at St Dunstans (for blind veterans) in Londons Regents Park. Claughton, however, was a pacifist of an extreme kind, refusing to cooperate in any way with the prosecution of the war. While many of his artist colleagues became non-combatants, he refused the draft and was imprisoned for two years. When he came out of Dartmoor in 1918 his feelings of alienation from society were almost complete: John Nash described it as a sense of permanent isolation from which Claughton never recovered. Kechie married this traduced and rather dispirited man in 1919, and they withdrew to a remote corner of north Norfolk. There she succeeded in bringing him back to life and painting again, although he remained reclusive and shy of publicity. In 1922 they left Norfolk to make the first of several long visits to friends in Bavaria where she too took up her paint brush. Some of her Bavarian pictures are shown in this first part of her website. 2

The Annunciation (Virgin Mary under an almond tree).1923. Watercolour. 62 x 45 cms. Ref: St Lukes Gospel 1:26-38). 3

Autumn, Bavaria. c.1927 Watercolour. 46 x 56 cms.

Spring, Bavaria. c.1927 Watercolour on paper. 46 x 61 cms. 4

Moonlight (Bavarian forest in snow). c.1927. Watercolour & black chalk on paper. 46 x 61 cms. This includes a small cameo, bottom right, of the Flight (see below). The flight of the Holy family [into Egypt] was one of several favourite themes Kechie shared with her husband.

The Flight. 1926. Etching. 9.5 x 11.5 cms 5

Music, Bavaria. 1927. Watercolour. 79 x 58 cms. Following their marriage in 1919, Kechie and her husband had been renting a house in the village of Overstrand, on the coast just east of Cromer. They had each exhibited a picture at the New English Art Club in 1921, and the following year they left Norfolk for their first visit to Bavaria, where they stayed for six months. The result of Kechies exposure to this new environment is illustrated on the previous pages. In 1923 Claughton started wood engraving and exhibiting with the Society of Wood Engravers. See http://www.scribd.com/doc/117326171/ for examples of his work. They had little money but in 1926-27 Kechies family helped them purchase land in open country between Southrepps and Trunch where, with a local builder, they designed and built a house, The Pightle. They lived a simple but labour-intensive life without electricity, using bicycles for transport, oil lamps, and pumped well water, with their privacy protected by a couple of geese. Electricity did not reach them until 1955. Originally their two-acre garden was bare of trees and plants, but the Pightle was very different when Kechie painted it in the 1950s page 9. In 1927, with Claughtons reputation as a wood engraver growing, Kechie held her first one-woman exhibition at the Goupil Gallery. Thirty of her watercolours of Norfolk and Bavaria were enthusiastically received, with epithets like Pre-Raphaelite on one side, and Japanese on the other, both recognising different elements in her painting. With the arrival of her brothers daughter, an 18 month old baby, who they adopted in 1933, Kechies life changed completely and she did not paint regularly again until the mid 1950s. The depression of the 1930s also affected her husband for whose prints there was no longer a demand, and they entered a financially lean period during which they took in a paying guest, and in 1939-41 let the Pightle and moved to Sheringham. When Kechies painting once again flowered after this long gap, she worked hard and was able to hold another successful exhibition of her watercolours in 1965, this time at the Assembly Rooms at Norwich, and despite suffering from the form of Parkinson's which eventually killed her three years later. Some of the works she displayed there are among the concluding paintings below. 6

The dead tree. 1961. Watercolour. 51 x 44 cms.

Cromer cliffs. 1920s. Watercolour. 35 x 55 cms. 7

The Swans. Watercolour. 1960s. 40 x 49 cms (with allusions to Virgil).

Nocturne. 1960s. Watercolour. 53 x 76 cms. (A grove of trees near the Pightle) 8

Spring (view over the Pightle). 1950s. Watercolour. 57 x78 cms.

Winter. 1963. Watercolour. 37 x 50 cms. (with allusions to Virgil). 9

Apple trees, Norfolk. 1964? Watercolour. 42 x 55 cms.

Winter, cliffs in snow. 1963. Watercolour. 45 x 62 cms. 10

The shepherd, Derbyshire. 1949. Watercolour. 36 x 56 cms.

Norfolk landscape. 1926. Etching. 12.5 x 13.5 cms. 11

The work of Kechies husband, CLAUGHTON

PELLEW can be viewed at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/117326171/

The lake 1931. Wood engraving by Claughton Pellew, 18 x 15 cms.

Mrs Sydney Vere Pearson 1924, coloured chalks on paper, by Claughton Pellew, 21.6 x 22.2 cms.

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