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Bess Norriss (1878-1939)
c.1900-10
Watercolour, 238 x 187mm (938 x 738")
National Portrait Gallery, London (NPG 4054)
Born in Melbourne, Australia,
where her father was a scientific chemist, Bess Norriss studied
at Melbourne Art Gallery School and at the Slade School of Fine
Art in London in 1905, specialising in watercolours and miniatures.
In 1908 she married J. Nevin Tait, the UK representative of and
partner in the Australian theatrical company J. & N. Tait.
They had one son and one daughter and lived in Church Street,
Chelsea.
Bess belonged to the Society of Women Artists and exhibited at
the Royal Academy of Arts and the Paris Salon (1908-36),
the Goupil Gallery and the Grosvenor Gallery, both in London.
She also exhibited in America and in Australia when she returned
home on trips. She often portrayed musicians in her miniatures,
but she also worked on a larger scale in watercolour. A member
of the Royal Society for Painting in Watercolour, and from 1907
the Royal Society of Miniature Painters, her paintings were reproduced
in the Studio and the Connoisseur magazines. In Who's Who in
Art (1934) her recreations are listed as theatre, reading and
music, and her club as the 'Soroptimist'. Francis Derwent Wood
(1871-1926) made a bronze bust of her in 1921-2, which
was purchased by the Chantrey Bequest for the Tate (then the
National Gallery, Millbank) in 1926.
Portraying herself here with a jaunty hat and a smile, she gives
the impression of a positive frame of mind. The fact that this
is a quick sketch enhances the feeling of something dashed off
for fun, not a full-blown, serious attempt at a portrait, but
this too could be interpreted as part of her character and linked
to her choice of medium - watercolour being essentially one
of quick marks and decisions.
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