oil on canvas
24 x 18 in.
Noel Laura Nisbet came from an artistic Scottish family and was the youngest daughter of Hume Nisbet, an artist, author and traveller. Her sister Margaret also became a painter. The family moved to London in 1887 and she won numerous awards while studying at the Clapham School of Art. In 1910 she married Harry Bush, a fellow student. Four years later her father set up his artistic daughters in two houses, with purpose-built attic studios, on an estate then being built in Merton Park, south west London. They were to live there for the rest of their lives; Harry Bush was to immortalise their world in his pictures of suburban London. Nisbet illustrated five books of fairy tales and legends and the majority of her Royal Academy exhibits (1914-1938) are of such subjects.
The present work is an interesting departure for the artist and depicts the interior of Bath Cottage, Speen, where Noel and their first daughter Hazel, born in 1916, spent the First World War, while Harry was enlisted into the army. The cosy domestic setting, with its patchwork chair cover and her partially finished embroidery is an glimpse of the artist's home from home.
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3 comments:
My great aunt (Margaret Nisbet was my grandmother). Great to see an interior of the cottage at Speen which was talked about by my mother, Sylvia, niece of Noel.I have a painting by Harry Bush which looks out of the window at Speen, I think, and of a bridge over a river/stream which I think was at Speen but nothing of what the place was like inside.
Hello, I'd like to hear more about the Speen cottage times from Pandora, as I have been working on Harry Bush for some time. Harry and Noel were both very interesting artists, and in very different ways. I have visited the house where they both lived in Merton. Peter
Hi, I wish I had more information. I have a painting by Harry Bush that might be an interior of the Speen place, looking out, and also of a,little bridge that might have been at Speen. Sadly there is no-one left from that generation who knew. My mother used to go there, I think, as a child. Janet and Hazel, the two Bush/Nisbet children are no longer alive either. We lived at 1 Queensland and they were at the other end. I just about remember Auntie Noel and Uncle Harry. He was called in to release me from the outside toilet where I was stuck! Sorry I cannot be of help. So sad when the history gets lost so quickly.
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