This family photograph, probably taken in the late 1880’s when the family was living in Freiburg shows all the children gathered round their parents – Thomas and Emilie Waddington. Vera, the youngest is sitting on the floor. Going round from left to right: Ethel Waddington (1871 – 1933) married a young doctor Robert Moon, who fought in… Read More
It is important to locate Vera Waddington’s approach to her artistic work within the broader context of artistic developments emerging in her early professional career. Where does she stand in the ‘crisis of brilliance’ a term coined by her mentor Henry Tonks, the formidable lecturer in drawing and later Professor of Fine Art at the… Read More
In 1909 Vera travelled with her father and sisters Mabel and Daisy to China via the Trans Siberian railway, taking a month and a day to reach Shanghai, home to Vera’s sister Daisy and her husband Duncan McNeil. In China she drew and painted in different media a series of scenes and people taken from… Read More
The Morning Post Friday 16 December In his lecture the other afternoon at the Grafton Galleries Mr Walter Sickert said “Distortion or deformation was beautiful and interesting when it was in the hands of people who had acquired skill, and whose hand perhaps wavered because it was a human hand and not a machine.” The… Read More
Vera, her two sisters, her niece and their father set out from England at the end of September 1909. They travelled to Moscow via the Hook of Holland, Berlin and Warsaw. They left Moscow at midnight on 6 October on the Trans Siberian Train, changing trains in Trkutsk and arriving at Harbin in China 9… Read More
Queen Mary and the Indian Watercolours In December 1911 Vera travelled to India with her father and sister to stay with her brother Charles Waddington who was headmaster of Mayo College, a school for the sons of Maharajas. Her stay coincided with a visit from Kong George V and Queen Mary. The Queen so admired… Read More
In 1916, whilst herself practising as a masseuse, (physiotherapist) in London hospitals Vera produced, wrote and illustrated a massage training book. What Every Masseuse should know was published by Methuen in 1917 and was positively reviewed in The Spectator: ‘It is not often that one comes across a handbook with such pretty pictures in it… Read More
In August 1919, soon after the birth of her second daughter Veronica in June, Vera decided to try her hand at the Pangbourne War Memorial, inspired, Vera says in her diary, by the war memorial at Mortimer. That Autumn she was working on both her war memorial drawings and those for the Roll of Honour… Read More
In October 1919 Vera Waddington was commissioned by the vicar of Mapledurham, an ancient village on the Thames near Reading, to produce a Role of Honour for the church of St Margaret’s for those from this area of the Thames who died fighting in First World War. To undertake this Vera took a correspondence course… Read More
Vera learnt the art of wood engraving in the late 1920’s from Eric Fitch Daglish. Daglish was a naturalist and wood engraver who lived not far from Vera in the Buckinghamshire Chilterns. He specialised in plants, birds and animals and illustrated many of his own books. Vera also specialised in nature. She printed her engravings… Read More