Marjorie Sherlock (1897-1973)[nb 1] was a British painter and etcher. Three books of her etchings were published between 1925 and 1932. Her painting Liverpool Street Station, now in the Government Art Collection, was first shown at the Royal Academy in 1917 and in 1987 was at 10 Downing Street when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Alice Marjorie Sherlock was born to Alice Mary (née Platts) Sherlock and civil engineer Henry Alexander George Sherlock at Fir Tree Cottage, George Lane, Wanstead, Essex.[1][nb 1] In 1918 she married her first cousin, Wilfrid Kenyon Tufnell Barrett, who was born in 1897. They later divorced. Barrett, an Army Major,[3] died in 1975.[1] She was described as "a woman of distinct and forceful character."[1]
Sherlock liked to travel and visited the United States during the depression. In the 1940s she moved to Axminster, near Ottery St Mary in a "rambling" and "isolated" house. Orovida Pissarro, the daughter of Lucien Pissarro, lived near her and financed trips for the two of them. Sherlock grew her own vegetables and made her own clothes to supplement her limited income. She died of a heart attack on 2 April 1973 at her house on Angela Court in Tipton St John, Devon.[1][2]
Education
During World War I, Sherlock studied under Walter Sickert and Harold Gilman at the Westminster Technical Institute. In 1917 Liverpool Street Station, an oil painting, was exhibited at the Royal Academy.[1] Gilman died in 1919, after only a short time as a teacher at Westminster, but by then he had inspired a loyal group of followers, including Mary Godwin, Ruth Doggett, and Sherlock, who carried on with his approach into the 1920s and 1930s.[4]
Sherlock made oil paintings and copper etchings, in pen and ink, and in pencil. She created detailed, complex works, like the etching Waterloo Station.[1] Her Egyptian, German and Indian etchings were published in 1925, 1929 and 1932, respectively.[1] She was influenced by the Camden Town Group.[5][6][nb 2]
^ abcThe BBC Your Paintings series and many other sources state that she was born in 1897.[2] the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography stated that she was born 3 February 1891.[1]