Helen Coombe

Helen Coombe
Reclining pencil sketch of Helen Coombe, with head on a pillow
Wedding day portrait of Helen Coombe by her husband Roger Fry
Born1864 (1864)
Died1937 (aged 72–73)
Other nameHelen Fry
Occupationspainter, decorative artist
SpouseRoger Fry

Helen Coombe (1864–1937), known after her 1896 marriage to Roger Fry as Helen Fry, was a British artist. She was a painter and a decorative artist in the Arts & Crafts style.

The Trevelyan cabinet, decorated by Coombe, at the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Early life and background

She was the eighth of the 12 children of the corn merchant Joseph Coombe of Waterford, who married in 1853 Laura Beaumont Russell, daughter of the surgeon George Ireland Russell of Milton-next-Gravesend, Kent; the surgeon Russell Coombe (1855–1933) was her elder brother. She was born in Lee, Kent.

Art student

Coombe in 1881 went to St John's Wood Art School, moving on to the Royal Academy Schools in 1882. Later she attended the National Art Training School. She associated with the circle around Century Guild of Artists, a small group founded by Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo, based in London at 20 Fitzroy Square. This was by 1889, when she attended an event at 20 Fitzroy Square, with Selwyn Image and ten others. Selwyn Image designed stained glass, and for the furniture of the Guild decorative panels. For Coombe, who studied with him, he was a mentor.

At some time in her student days, at earliest in 1886, Coombe met and befriended Mary Gordon. On Gordon's authority, Martin Ferguson Smith believes that Coombe spent a student year in Paris, in the period 1891 to 1894; she returned malnourished, according to Gordon, who qualified as a physician in 1890. Smith suggests she might have studied at the Académie Colarossi, or the Académie Julian, or both.

Artist with studio

Coombe's productive period starting in 1895 saw her with a London studio off Fitzroy Square, at 27 Southampton Street, an address now in Conway Street. She worked also in Haslemere, Surrey, where Arnold Dolmetsch had his musical instrument workshop.

Married woman

Helen with Roger Fry, photograph c.1897

At the period from late 1901 when W. B. Yeats was promoting performances inspired by Florence Farr as "chaunting", accompanied by a psaltery, he favoured the three-musician chorus. Helen Fry was part of a group trained in this form of declamation, with Isabel Fry and Elizabeth Trevelyan née van der Hoeven, wife of R. C. Trevelyan.

Helen Fry suffered from deteriorating mental health, and had Henry Head as consultant. She was hospitalised for treatment at The Priory in 1907 and 1909. In 1910 she was admitted to The Retreat, York, where she spent the rest of her life. She died there, an autopsy revealing a thickening of the skull to which her illness was attributed.

Family

Coombe married Roger Fry on 3 December 1896 at the Priory Church of St Bartholomew the Great in London. They had been introduced in 1895 by R. C. Trevelyan, who shared lodgings with Roger. Informed of their engagement in July 1896, Roger's father Edward Fry and mother had serious reservations about the match, including questions about Helen's background, and her financial situation in the light of their current financial support of Roger. These issues took a month to resolve.

The couple had a son and a daughter. The son Julian Edward Fry (1901–1984) emigrated to Canada in 1923 and became a cattle rancher. The daughter (Agnes) Pamela Fry (1902–1985) married in 1923 the artist Avram "Micu" Diamand.

Works

Coombe gained presumed painting commissions through associations with the Church of Humanity in Chapel Street, Belgravia. She painted her friend Lucy Crompton, wife of Henry Crompton (this portrait is not known to be extant). Her copy of a work from the workshop of Botticelli, The Virgin and Child with Saint John and an Angel, now in the Herbert Gallery, was done for Emily Geddes, widow of James Cruickshank Geddes of the Calcutta Positivist Society, and sister-in-law of Richard Congreve, the Church's founder.

An art student perhaps until 1895, Coombe exhibited at the New English Art Club. Another portrait was of Hubert Crackanthorpe, also a pupil of Selwyn Image. She designed a stained-glass window on the subject of Martha and Mary, for St John the Evangelist Church, High Cross, East Hertfordshire. The model for Mary was Alice Knewstub, daughter of the artist Walter John Knewstub and future wife of William Rothenstein; and the model for Martha was May Morris.

A harpsichord by Arnold Dolmetsch and decorated by Coombe was shown at the 5th exhibition in 1896 of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, and was "the most popular item". Coombe painted the inside of the lid, using her own designs, while Herbert Horne added a design above the keyboard, and Selwyn Image the lettering. For the design, she consulted Roger Fry, who gave her substantive help with the roundels filled out as medallions, as she worked to a deadline in summer 1896. The instrument is now in the Horniman Museum.

Three years later, another Dolmetsch keyboard, a clavichord, was signed "Helen Fry pinxit 1899". It was one of three smaller, pentagonal instruments made in golden pine, and was given as a wedding present to R. C. Trevelyan, married in 1900. It was exhibited in the 6th Arts and Crafts exhibition in 1899, and at the Prima Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Decorativa Moderna in 1902. The Trevelyan cabinet (c.1900), designed by Roger Fry and now in the Art Gallery of South Australia, was decorated by Helen.

Tancred Borenius later praised Helen Fry's potential as a painter.

Further reading

Notes

  1. ↑ Bruneau, Anne-Pascale. "Fry, Roger Eliot (1866–1934)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/33285. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
  2. 1 2 3 "Roger Eliot Fry (1866-1934)". King's College Cambridge.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Spalding, Frances (1 January 1980). Roger Fry, Art and Life. University of California Press. p. 58. ISBN 978-0-520-04126-4.
  4. ↑ "Coombe, Russell (CM879R)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  5. ↑ "Married". Morning Advertiser. 16 June 1853. p. 7.
  6. ↑ "Russell, George Ireland (1798 - 1883)". livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk.
  7. ↑ Smith, Martin Ferguson (2023). The Artist Helen Coombe (1864-1937): The Tragedy of Roger Fry's Wife. Paul Holberton Publishing. p. 32. ISBN 978-1-913645-53-3.
  8. ↑ Jones, Helen Caroline. "Image, Selwyn (1849–1930)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/34093. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
  9. ↑ Smith, Martin Ferguson (2023). The Artist Helen Coombe (1864-1937): The Tragedy of Roger Fry's Wife. Paul Holberton Publishing. p. 92. ISBN 978-1-913645-53-3.
  10. 1 2 Smith, Martin Ferguson (2023). The Artist Helen Coombe (1864-1937): The Tragedy of Roger Fry's Wife. Paul Holberton Publishing. p. 47. ISBN 978-1-913645-53-3.
  11. ↑ McIntyre, Neil (2014). How British Women Became Doctors: The Story of the Royal Free Hospital and Its Medical School. Wenrowave Press. p. 184. ISBN 978-0-9930178-1-0.
  12. ↑ Smith, Martin Ferguson (2023). The Artist Helen Coombe (1864-1937): The Tragedy of Roger Fry's Wife. Paul Holberton Publishing. p. 52. ISBN 978-1-913645-53-3.
  13. ↑ Molesworth, Charles (1 March 2016). The Capitalist and the Critic: J. P. Morgan, Roger Fry, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. University of Texas Press. p. 74. ISBN 978-1-4773-0840-0.
  14. ↑ Schuchard, Ronald (28 February 2008). The Last Minstrels: Yeats and the Revival of the Bardic Arts. OUP Oxford. p. xxii. ISBN 978-0-19-923000-6.
  15. ↑ Schuchard, Ronald (28 February 2008). The Last Minstrels: Yeats and the Revival of the Bardic Arts. OUP Oxford. p. 78. ISBN 978-0-19-152806-4.
  16. ↑ MacKenzie, Charlotte (22 July 2005). Psychiatry for the Rich: A History of Ticehurst Private Asylum 1792-1917. Routledge. p. 241. ISBN 978-1-134-96246-4.
  17. ↑ Lago, Mary (1996). Christiana Herringham and the Edwardian Art Scene. University of Missouri Press. p. 241. ISBN 978-0-8262-1024-1.
  18. ↑ Woolf, Virginia (29 August 2013). Roger Fry: a biography by Virginia Woolf: A Biography. E-artnow ebooks. p. 302. ISBN 978-80-7484-356-3.
  19. ↑ Smith, Martin Ferguson (2023). The Artist Helen Coombe (1864-1937): The Tragedy of Roger Fry's Wife. Paul Holberton Publishing. p. 153. ISBN 978-1-913645-53-3.
  20. ↑ Smith, Martin Ferguson (2023). The Artist Helen Coombe (1864-1937): The Tragedy of Roger Fry's Wife. Paul Holberton Publishing. p. 153. ISBN 978-1-913645-53-3.
  21. ↑ Smith, Martin Ferguson (2023). The Artist Helen Coombe (1864-1937): The Tragedy of Roger Fry's Wife. Paul Holberton Publishing. pp. 123–134. ISBN 978-1-913645-53-3.
  22. ↑ "Fry, Julian Edward (1901-1984), cattle rancher - archives.trin.cam.ac.uk". archives.trin.cam.ac.uk.
  23. ↑ Fry, Julian; Rosenbaum, Stanford Patrick (2005). Conversation with Julian Fry. Cecil Woolf. p. 5. ISBN 978-1-897967-29-4.
  24. ↑ Smith, Martin Ferguson (2023). The Artist Helen Coombe (1864-1937): The Tragedy of Roger Fry's Wife. Paul Holberton Publishing. p. 295. ISBN 978-1-913645-53-3.
  25. ↑ Rosenbaum, Stanford Patrick (1 January 1995). The Bloomsbury Group: A Collection of Memoirs and Commentary. University of Toronto Press. p. 454. ISBN 978-0-8020-7640-3.
  26. ↑ Smith, Martin Ferguson (2023). The Artist Helen Coombe (1864-1937): The Tragedy of Roger Fry's Wife. Paul Holberton Publishing. p. 3. ISBN 978-1-913645-53-3.
  27. ↑ Smith, Martin Ferguson (2023). The Artist Helen Coombe (1864-1937): The Tragedy of Roger Fry's Wife. Paul Holberton Publishing. pp. 36–37. ISBN 978-1-913645-53-3.
  28. ↑ George Eliot's Life, as Related in her Letters and Journals. Cambridge University Press. 1855. p. 185. ISBN 978-1-108-02007-7. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
  29. ↑ Claeys, Gregory (26 August 2010). Imperial Sceptics: British Critics of Empire, 1850–1920. Cambridge University Press. p. 67. ISBN 978-1-139-49255-3.
  30. ↑ "Coombe, Helen, d.1937, Art UK". artuk.org.
  31. ↑ Woolf, Virginia (17 November 2013). Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated). Delphi Classics. p. 3007. ISBN 978-1-908909-19-0.
  32. ↑ Smith, Martin Ferguson (2023). The Artist Helen Coombe (1864-1937): The Tragedy of Roger Fry's Wife. Paul Holberton Publishing. pp. 52, 87. ISBN 978-1-913645-53-3.
  33. ↑ Smith, Martin Ferguson (2023). The Artist Helen Coombe (1864-1937): The Tragedy of Roger Fry's Wife. Paul Holberton Publishing. pp. 62–63. ISBN 978-1-913645-53-3.
  34. ↑ Callen, Anthea (1979). Women Artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement, 1870-1914. Pantheon Books. p. 169. ISBN 978-0-394-50667-8.
  35. ↑ Campbell, Margaret (1975). Dolmetsch: The Man and His Work. Hamilton. pp. 100–101. ISBN 978-0-241-89176-6.
  36. ↑ "314.122 True board zithers with resonator box (box zither)". Horniman Museum and Gardens.
  37. ↑ Brauchli, Bernard; Galazzo, Alberto; Wardman, Judith (2008). De Clavicordio VIII: The Clavichord on the Iberian Peninsula ; Proceedings of the VIII International Clavichord Symposium, Magnano, 5-8 September 2007. Musica Antica a Magnano. p. 33. ISBN 978-88-900269-5-9.
  38. ↑ The Consort. Dolmetsch Foundation. 1962. p. 110.
  39. ↑ "Trevelyan, Robert Calverley (TRVN891RC)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  40. ↑ Smith, Martin Ferguson (20 July 2021). In and out of Bloomsbury: Biographical essays on twentieth-century writers and artists. Manchester University Press. p. 113. ISBN 978-1-5261-5743-0.
  41. ↑ Maps, Visit North Terrace Adelaide SA 5000 Australia T. +61 8 8207 7000 E. infoartgallery sa gov au www agsa sa gov au AGSA Kaurna yartangka yuwanthi AGSA stands on Kaurna land Open in. "Helen Fry". AGSA - The Art Gallery of South Australia.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  42. ↑ Birrell, Rebecca (2021). This Dark Country: Women Artists, Still Life and Intimacy in the Early Twentieth Century. Bloomsbury Circus. ISBN 978-1-5266-0401-9.