Lady Mabel Marguerite Annesley (25 February 1881 - 19 June 1959) was a wood-engraver

Wood engraving

Wood engraving is a technique in printmaking where the "matrix" worked by the artist is a block of wood. It is a variety of woodcut and so a relief printing technique, where ink is applied to the face of the block and printed by using relatively low pressure. A normal engraving, like an etching,...

 and watercolour painter. Her work is in many collections, including the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Gallery of Canada and the Museum of New Zealand. She exhibited in the Festival of Britain

Festival of Britain

The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition in Britain in the summer of 1951. It was organised by the government to give Britons a feeling of recovery in the aftermath of war and to promote good quality design in the rebuilding of British towns and cities. The Festival's centrepiece was in...

 in 1952.

She was born on 25 February 1881, at Annesley Lodge, Regent's Park

Regent's Park

Regent's Park is one of the Royal Parks of London. It is in the north-western part of central London, partly in the City of Westminster and partly in the London Borough of Camden...

, London, the daughter of Hugh Annesley, 5th Earl Annesley

Hugh Annesley, 5th Earl Annesley

Hugh Annesley, 5th Earl Annesley was a British military officer and Member of Parliament for County Cavan from 1857 to 1874.-Biography:He was the second son of William Richard Annesley, 3rd Earl Annesley....

 (1831–1908), lieutenant-colonel in the Scots Fusilier Guards and landowner, and his wife, Mabel Wilhelmina Frances Markham, Countess Annesley (1858–1891), greatgranddaughter of Sir Francis Grant

Francis Grant (artist)

Sir Francis Grant, RA , was a Scottish portrait painter, who painted Queen Victoria and many distinguished British aristocratic and political figures of the day...

, eminent Victorian portrait painter and president of the Royal Academy. Her half-sister, Lady Constance Malleson

Lady Constance Malleson

The Lady Constance Malleson was a British writer and actress , the wife of actor Miles Malleson and lover of Bertrand Russell....

 was a writer, actress, and mistress of Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...

.

At fourteen, she studied at the Frank Calderon

William Frank Calderon

William Frank Calderon aka W. Frank Calderon , was an English Victorian painter of portraits, landscapes, figure subjects and sporting pictures...

 School of Animal Painting in London. At eighteen she was elected a member of the Belfast Art Society and exhibited with the Society for many years.

She married in 1904 and had one son, Gerald. Her husband died in 1913, and a year later she inherited Castlewellan

Castlewellan

Castlewellan is a village in County Down, Northern Ireland. It is beside Castlewellan Lake and Slievenaslat mountain, southwest of Downpatrick. It lies between the Mourne Mountains and Slieve Croob. It had a population of 2,392 people in the 2001 Census....

 Castle.

She had four children

• Gerald Francis Sowerby, married Lady Elizabeth Joceyln, daughter of Earl of Roden
  Earl of Roden
  Earl of Roden is a title in the Peerage of Ireland. It was created in 1771 for Robert Jocelyn, 2nd Viscount Jocelyn. This branch of the Jocelyn family descends from the 1st Viscount, prominent Irish lawyer and politician Robert Jocelyn, the son of Thomas Jocelyn, third son of Sir Robert Jocelyn,...
  
  .
• Edith Mary Sowerby, married Sir Henry Havelock-Allan, 2nd Baronet.
• Mabel Frances Sowerby
• Mary Gertrude Sowerby

At the age of about forty she learnt the technique of wood engraving at the Central School

Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design

Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London. The school has an outstanding international reputation, and is considered one of the world's leading art and design institutions...

 in London. She was soon regarded as one of its three or four leading exponents in Britain along with artists like Gwen Raverat

Gwen Raverat

Gwendolen Mary "Gwen" Raverat née Darwin was a celebrated English wood engraving artist who co-founded the Society of Wood Engravers in England.- Biography :...

 and Robert Gibbings

Robert Gibbings

Robert Gibbings was an Irish artist and author who was most noted for his work as a wood carver and engraver and for his books on travel and natural history.-Life:...

.

She moved home several times, living also in Belfast

Belfast

Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...

, Connemara

Connemara

Connemara is a district in the west of Ireland consisting of a broad peninsula between Killary Harbour and Kilkieran Bay in the west of County Galway.-Overview:...

 and in Rathfriland

Rathfriland

Rathfriland is a village in County Down, Northern Ireland. It is a hilltop Plantation of Ulster settlement between the Mourne Mountains, Slieve Croob and Banbridge. It had a population of 2,079 people in the 2001 Census.-History:...

. During the Second World War she emigrated to New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

 but returned to England in 1953, settling in Suffolk

Suffolk

Suffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...

.

Lady Mabel Annesley died of myelomatosis on 19 June 1959 in Clare, Suffolk

Clare, Suffolk

Clare is a small town on the north bank of the River Stour in Suffolk, England.Clare is from Bury St Edmunds and from Sudbury. It lies in the 'South and Heart of Suffolk' . As a cloth town, it is one of Suffolk's 'threads'. Clare is the current holder of Village of the Year and has won the...

, and was buried in Long Melford

Long Melford

Long Melford is a large village and civil parish in the county of Suffolk, England. It is on Suffolk's border with Essex, which is marked by the River Stour, approximately from Colchester and from Bury St. Edmunds...

, Suffolk. She left an unfinished autobiography called As The Sight Is Bent, which was published by the Museum Press in 1964. In it she says that Paul Nash

Paul Nash (artist)

Paul Nash was a British landscape painter, surrealist and war artist, as well as a book-illustrator, writer and designer of applied art. He was the older brother of the artist John Nash.-Early life:...

 and David Jones

David Jones (poet)

David Jones CH was both a painter and one of the first generation British modernist poets. As a painter he worked chiefly in watercolor, painting portraits and animal, landscape, legendary and religious subjects. He was also a wood-engraver and designer of inscriptions. As a writer he was...

were particular influences.

External links

• Works by Mabel Annesley Collection of Museum of New Zealand