Frances Darlington
Frances Darlington was an English artist of the New Sculpture movement. In the early 20th century she created decorative panels, busts, garden statuary, medallions, group sculptures, and statuettes, in various materials including copper, bronze and painted plaster. She also designed a railway poster, featuring Ilkley.
She is known in Harrogate for her painted plaster relief panels, including her large frieze around the walls of the vestibule of Harrogate Theatre, and her Stations of the Cross in St Wilfrid's Church, Harrogate. A retrospective exhibition of her works, called Heavenly Creatures, was held in Harrogate's Mercer Art Gallery in 2003 and 2004.
Personal life
Darlington's paternal grandfather was solicitor and justice of the peace John Darlington, who managed the Leeds and West Riding Bank in Bradford, and later lived at Shipley Hall, Shipley. He was the first secretary of the Bradford chamber of commerce.Darlington's father, born in 1849 at Shipley Hall, was the Harrogate, Bradford and Ilkley solicitor Latimer John De Vere Darlington, who was the Belgian Consul for Bradford, and a Freeman of the City of London. Her mother was Ellen Emma née Taplin, daughter of Hugh Brown Taplin of Shaw House, Headingley, Leeds manager for the Royal Insurance Company. Emma Taplin was a painter, although untrained. Her parents married on 14 or 15 August 1877, at St Chad's Church, Far Headingley, the service being conducted by Bishop Ryan. Darlington had an elder brother, variety artist Hugh Latimer M. Darlington, who had shell shock from the First World War, and a younger sister, Dorothy Marriott Darlington.
Darlington was born in Headingley, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, on 3 February 1880. In 1881 she was living with her grandfather, parents and elder brother in Shaw House, Shaw Lane, Headingley. She spent her younger years in Ilkley, and then – when not training in London – for most of the time between 1900 and 1910 she was living and working at her family home at Burland House, Harrogate, although between 1906 and 1908 she was living in Ilkley. She lived in the Harrogate area until 1926 when she removed from Knaresborough to London, where she lived at the Garden Studio, 8 Edith Villas, Kensington. She never married. She had "strong religious beliefs", and was a member of the congregation of St Wilfrid's Church, Harrogate. She won prizes in Yorkshire newspaper competitions for writing limericks. Darlington was shy of marriage, having observed its negative effect on the careers of women.
For part of her life, Darlington may have had a second home, because she is recorded living and working in both Yorkshire and Surrey. She left her London studio and moved to Dutton Cottage, Limpsfield, Oxted, Surrey, at the beginning of the First World War. She died of heart failure at Oxted on 5 September 1940, when Oxted was bombed during the Second World War. Her will was proved at Llandudno on 18 November 1940, and she left . The Ripon Museum Trust states that, "Despite selling work internationally and winning significant public commissions, Frances died in relative obscurity".
Career
In spite of being shy of self-promotion, Darlington's reputation went before her. According to writer Ann Compton, Darlington was "Harrogate's first sculptor to be born and raised in the town". Her career spanned more than four decades until the late 1930s, but she started young. In May 1896, The Wharfedale & Airedale Observer quoted from the Bradford Argus:Miss F. Darlington, who has not yet completed her fifteenth birthday, has contributed a couple of clay modelled works to the Bradford Museum which reflect the utmost credit on the young artist. She had previously on exhibit a well-executed bust of Sweet Ann Page but the new works are a bust of her father Mr L. Darlington, and figure of her younger sister. Both are admirably modelled.
Darlington trained as a sculptor and medallist, and she executed decorative panels, busts, garden statuary, medallions, group sculptures, and statuettes, in various materials including copper and bronze. In 1897 she was entered for one year as a sculpture student at the Slade School of Art, London, where she studied under George Frampton. Studying at the Slade at the same time were Edna Clarke Hall, William Orpen, and Augustus and Gwen John. As a student she lodged in Alexander House, in Kensington Gore. In 1901 she passed the Royal College of Art's entrance examination, having won the South Kensington Modelling Sketch Club Prize, and the second prize in the Gilbert Competition for modelling. After that, she studied at the Central School of Art and Design, South Kensington, under Édouard Lantéri, who was professor of modelling. She was possibly also taught by Gerald Moira, a mural painter and experimenter in decorative, coloured plaster in low relief. She remained in London until around 1900. By September 1901, the Bradford Observer was describing Darlington as "a sculptor of high reputation". Her first commission was a bust, which was titled Emily Bottomley, and executed in 1898. In July 1904 her sculpture, The Unforeseen, was featured on the front cover of the journal Womanhood. According to Pauline Rose, this exposure "established her professional status" and enhanced her reputation.
In 1911 Darlington had a home studio. She later had a studio in Knaresborough, which was the subject of a painting of, The Sculptor's Loft, by Elise M. Bayley. The painting shows a statue of Darlington's niece Marjory, and a plaster cast of her bust of Robert Collyer. Between 1934 and 1939 she rented a studio at Wentworth Studios in Manresa Road, Chelsea. She experimented with polychrome, that is, colouring her sculptures. Some of her works appeared in The Illustrated London News and Colour magazine.
According to the University of Rochester, Darlington's "best work... is in plaster relief". During her early career, Darlington worked on official commissions in the Yorkshire area, including relief panels and busts, "with religious and mythological subjects". Her models included friends and relatives. One of her models was her sister Dorothy Marriott Darlington. Due to her close connection as a worshipper at St Wilfrid's, it has been suggested that some of the figures in her Stations of the Cross reliefs in that church are portraits of members of its congregation.
Besides sculpture, Darlington also produced a railway-poster design, to be "placed at the various stations on the different railways", and to "bring before the public the advantage of Ilkley". She beat twenty-nine other competitors for first prize in that 1906 design competition.
Works
Early works
In 1896, before her formal training began, Darlington contributed Mr L. Darlington and Dorothy Marriott Darlington, a pair of clay busts for an exhibition at Bradford Museum. In the same year, her sculpture Sweet Anne Page was shown at Bradford Art Gallery. One of Darlington's early works was a medallion portrait of the superintendent of Alexander House, Maude Palmer. Darlington had lived at Alexander House as a student.The Maude Palmer commission was followed after her training at the Slade and the Royal College of Art by her marble Bust of Queen Victoria, for Morley Town Hall. The bust was unveiled on 8 December 1902, by mayoress Mrs Scarth, in commemoration of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. The cost was met by the remainder of the council's Diamond Jubilee fund. Darlington was present at the unveiling. Around 1903, Darlington completed her marble Bust of Sir Francis Cook, commissioned by Queen Alexandra for Alexandra House, "a charitable institution". Her next recorded work is The Little Sea Maiden, which is now in the collection of Leeds Art Gallery. Her panel, Madonna della Rosa, was illustrated in the Catholic Home Journal, which described it as "an excellent piece of work".
''Sir Perceval's Vision of the Holy Grail'' (1907) for Harrogate Ladies College
Early in 1907, the Leeds Mercury reported that Darlington's plaster bas relief of Sir Perceval's Vision of the Holy Grail, a decoration for a mantelpiece in the reading room of Harrogate Ladies' College, had been accepted for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. The wide panel featured twelve figures. The Sheffield Daily Telegraph said: it was "carefully composed and vigorously modelled". The Yorkshire Post commented, "There is some very good modelling in Sir Perceval and the Vision of the Holy Grail, though the difficulties of the composition are not entirely overcome, and there are some awkward lines". In 1907 the panel was at Harrogate Ladies' College, in the Hewlett Reading Room. It was later in St James' Church, Wetherby; the work was reported to be there in 1949. From the 1980s, the work has been displayed over the vestry door in St Mary the Virgin Church, Ingleton, North Yorkshire.''Rev. Dr Collyer'' and ''Andrew Carnegie'' (1907) for Ilkley Library
One of Darlington's works which drew public attention was the pair of life-sized bronze busts which were commissioned in 1906, and which Darlington completed in 1907, at a cost of 90 guineas for the Ilkley Public Library. One of the busts was a portrait of Reverend Dr Robert Collyer of New York, who had been a blacksmith in Ilkley when young. He had since been a benefactor to Ilkley and had donated 300 books to the new library. The other was of Andrew Carnegie, who donated £3,000 for the construction of the library in 1907. When the maquettes for the busts were offered for viewing, the Brighouse News said, "The representations are exceedingly life-like and natural, and should do much to increase Miss Darlington's reputation".The library was opened, and the busts were unveiled, in the empty library in front of a large audience on 2 October 1907. The library was not to be furnished with shelves and books until the following spring, but the unveiling was put forward when Collyer visited England. At the opening, Collyer was presented with a gold key, and an illuminated address. On seeing his bust, Collyer responded: "I am proud of my likeness. It is well done, and it will stay well done. Time will only ripen the features". The Wharfedale & Airedale Observer commented: " has shown conspicuous ability in this particular line, and we are told that the sculptures do her infinite credit".