Ellen Mary Rope (1855–1934) was a British sculptor whose career stretched from 1885 until the early 1930s. Her work is notable for its range of expression and style, from the classical to the popular. She worked chiefly in bas-reliefs, in stone, cast metal or plaster.
Life
Born the seventh child of George and Anne Rope of
Blaxhall
Blaxhall is a village and civil parish in the East Suffolk district of the English county of Suffolk. Located around south-west of Leiston and Aldeburgh, in 2007 its population was estimated to be 220, measured at 194 in the 2011 Census. ,
Suffolk
Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include L ...
, Ellen Mary Rope is said to have displayed strong artistic leanings as a child, maybe under the influence of her eldest brother,
George Thomas Rope, a
landscape painter
Landscape painting, also known as landscape art, is the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, especially where the main subject is a wide view—with its elements arranged into a coherent compo ...
and naturalist. To foster this interest, she was sent to London in 1870 to study at
Nottingham Place
Nottingham Place is a street in the City of Westminster that runs from Marylebone Road in the north to Paddington Street in the south. The street was named after the Harley family estates in Nottinghamshire. Former residents include the social re ...
School in
Marylebone
Marylebone (usually , also , ) is a district in the West End of London, in the City of Westminster. Oxford Street, Europe's busiest shopping street, forms its southern boundary.
An ancient parish and latterly a metropolitan borough, it m ...
, where she was taught drawing by
Octavia Hill
Octavia Hill (3 December 1838 – 13 August 1912) was an English social reformer, whose main concern was the welfare of the inhabitants of cities, especially London, in the second half of the nineteenth century. Born into a family of radical t ...
.
She later returned to her home village and attended the
Ipswich School of Art
Ipswich School of Art (ISA) was an art school in Ipswich, Suffolk. It was founded as the Ipswich School of Science and Art which opened on 10 January 1859. It continued to have an independent existence until 1997, when it was absorbed by the Univ ...
, taught by, among others, William T. Griffiths, the principal. Her first exhibited works were paintings and drawings of similar rural subjects to her brother, who exhibited alongside her. She returned to London to the
Slade School of Fine Art
The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...
in 1877, continuing to study drawing and painting but, in 1880, Professor
Alphonse Legros
Alphonse Legros (8 May 1837 – 8 December 1911) was a French, later British, painter, etcher, sculptor, and medallist. He moved to London in 1863 and later took British citizenship. He was important as a teacher in the British etching r ...
introduced a course in sculpture and modelling, which Rope followed to good effect, radically influencing the direction of her artistic career.
Her art developed along classic
Arts and Crafts
A handicraft, sometimes more precisely expressed as artisanal handicraft or handmade, is any of a wide variety of types of work where useful and decorative objects are made completely by one’s hand or by using only simple, non-automated re ...
lines, with emphasis on the artist's involvement throughout the creative process and manual not mechanised production. Rope was based in London for most of her professional career, latterly in Deodar Road,
Putney
Putney () is a district of southwest London, England, in the London Borough of Wandsworth, southwest of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.
History
Putney is an ancient pa ...
, where she shared accommodation and a studio with her assistant Dorothy Anne Aldrich Rope, a niece. In the same road was the stained-glass studio of another niece
M. E. Aldrich Rope, not to be confused with a third artistic niece,
Margaret Agnes Rope
Margaret Agnes Rope (20 June 18826 December 1953) was a British stained glass artist in the Arts and Crafts movement tradition active in the first four decades of the 20th century. Her work is notable for the intensity and skill of the paintin ...
.
Ellen Mary Rope only fully retired to the family home at Grove Farm in Blaxhall shortly before her death in 1934 at age 79.
Works
Her first piece at the
Royal Academy of Arts
The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its purp ...
was a terracotta panel: "David playing before Saul" (1885). From that date she had works at R.A. Exhibitions in most years up until 1918. By 1893 she was sufficiently well known to be
commissioned to provide four plaster relief figures for
spandrels
A spandrel is a roughly triangular space, usually found in pairs, between the top of an arch and a rectangular frame; between the tops of two adjacent arches or one of the four spaces between a circle within a square. They are frequently fill ...
in
the Woman's Building (Chicago)
The Woman's Building was designed and built for the World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893 under the auspices of the Board of Lady Managers. Of the twelve main buildings for the Exhibition, on June 30, 1892 The Woman's Building was ...
of the
World Columbian Exposition
The World's Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World's Fair) was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, hel ...
in Chicago.
Each polychrome panel was nearly six feet tall, and represented Faith, Hope, Charity and Heavenly Wisdom.
As well as exhibition pieces, she had a more commercial strand to her art, becoming a leading designer for the
Della Robbia Pottery
The Della Robbia Pottery was a ceramic factory founded in 1894 in Birkenhead, near Liverpool, England. It closed in 1906. Initially it mostly made large pieces with high artistic aspirations, especially relief panels for architectural use, ...
from 1896 until its closure in 1906. This led to more popular domestic works featuring children, flowers and the sea.
These small panels "were primarily designed to be executed at low cost and repeated if desired, so that they could be used by others than the very rich" However, major architectural commissions continued, including large figures of Faith, Hope and Charity for
Morley Town Hall
Morley Town Hall is a municipal facility in Morley, West Yorkshire, England. The town hall, which is the meeting place of Morley Town Council, is a Grade I listed building.
History
Previously the local board of health in Morley had met in a roo ...
, Leeds (since lost), a 20' long panel for
Rotherhithe
Rotherhithe () is a district of south-east London, England, and part of the London Borough of Southwark. It is on a peninsula on the south bank of the Thames, facing Wapping, Shadwell and Limehouse on the north bank, as well as the Isle of ...
Town Hall (
destroyed by wartime bombing), and a memorial executed in cement at St Mary's,
Bolton-on-Swale
Bolton-on-Swale is a village and civil parish in the Richmondshire district of North Yorkshire, England. In 2015, North Yorkshire County Council estimated the population of the civil parish to be 70.
History
The village is mentioned in the ' ...
.
Her association with the Garrett circle, dating back to childhood, led to her spandrels from Chicago being installed in the dining room of
Chenies Street
Chenies Street is a street in Bloomsbury, London, that runs between Tottenham Court Road and Gower Street. It is the location of a number of notable buildings such as Minerva House, the Drill Hall (now RADA Studios), and a memorial to The Rang ...
Ladies' Residential Chambers (a project of cousins
Rhoda
''Rhoda'' is an American television sitcom created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns starring Valerie Harper that originally aired on CBS for five seasons from September 9, 1974, to December 9, 1978. It was the first spin-off of ''The Mary Tyle ...
and
Agnes Garrett
Agnes Garrett (12 July 1845 – 1935)Serena Kelly"Garrett, Agnes (1845–1935)" ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved 9 January 2015. was an English suffragist and interior designer and the founder i ...
) and later to the marble memorial to the mother of
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (9 June 1836 – 17 December 1917) was an English physician and suffragist. She was the first woman to qualify in Britain as a physician and surgeon. She was the co-founder of the first hospital staffed by women, ...
in
Aldeburgh
Aldeburgh ( ) is a coastal town in the county of Suffolk, England. Located to the north of the River Alde. Its estimated population was 2,276 in 2019. It was home to the composer Benjamin Britten and remains the centre of the international Aldeb ...
parish church. Earlier, in 1894, another Garrett associate,
Octavia Hill
Octavia Hill (3 December 1838 – 13 August 1912) was an English social reformer, whose main concern was the welfare of the inhabitants of cities, especially London, in the second half of the nineteenth century. Born into a family of radical t ...
, had commissioned
bas-relief
Relief is a sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces are bonded to a solid background of the same material. The term '' relief'' is from the Latin verb ''relevo'', to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that th ...
s by Rope for the drawing room of the
Women's University Settlement
Blackfriars Settlement charitable organization in the UK established to improve the well-being of disadvantaged people. It was originally established as the Women's University Settlement in 1887, and focused especially on the needs of women and c ...
in Nelson Square,
Blackfriars.
Rope's 1902 memorial plaque in marble to Mary Anne Moberley is located in
Salisbury Cathedral
Salisbury Cathedral, formally the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is an Anglican cathedral in Salisbury, England. The cathedral is the mother church of the Diocese of Salisbury and is the seat of the Bishop of Salisbury.
The buil ...
.
Gallery
File:David_playing_before_Saul.jpg, "David playing before Saul", 1885, terracotta panel
File:Ellen_Mary_Rope_marble_relief.jpg, Marble bas-relief probably of the Virgin Mary
File:EMR-nativity-with-children-and-lilies.jpg, Christchild with contemporary children, and lilies: a typical later theme, reused in several locations
File:Guardian-angel-Blaxhall.jpg, Plaster panel in her local parish church, St Peter's, Blaxhall, Suffolk
File:Boat-of-Education.jpg, "Patience and Hope steering the Boat of Education", plaster panel
References
Further reading
"The New Sculpture" by Beattie, S., Yale University Press, London, 1983
"Miss Ellen Rope, Sculptor" by Kendall, B., in The Artist, December 1899, pp. 206–212
"The Art of E.M.Rope" by Maclean, F.J., in The Expert, July 13, 1907, pp. 251–2
"Working Against The Grain; Women Sculptors in Britain c.1885-1950" by Rose, P., Liverpool University Press, 2020; 21, 117, 175-77, 215-20, 221, 263-64
"Arts & Crafts Churches" by Hamilton, A., Lund Humphries, 2020; 133,209, 217, 255,261
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Rope, Mary ellen
1855 births
1934 deaths
19th-century English sculptors
20th-century English sculptors
19th-century English women artists
20th-century English women artists
Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art
English women sculptors
Artists from Suffolk
Sibling artists
People from Suffolk Coastal (district)