Addiscombe artist who brought vivid colour to children’s books

SUNDAY SUPPLEMENT: The thriving arts scene in Croydon in the first decades of the 20th Century included five sisters with connections to Cicely Mary Barker and Samuel Coleridge Taylor, as DAVID MORGAN explains

The exhibition of illustrations and cartoons which was held in the Lecture Room of Croydon Library in May 1917 must have been quite a special event. More than 300 original drawings were on display, many of them “extremely valuable”, according to the press report.

This private collection had been acquired by a Halifax businessman who had decided that he would allow it to be viewed by a wider audience, through a series of exhibitions to be held in public libraries.

There were some well-known British artists of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries who had works on display. One was Tom Browne, a cartoonist, painter and illustrator who today is best known for the Johnnie Walker whisky logo, a strutting, monocled, top hat wearing character.

Another featured artist in the collection was George Cruikshank. Although he had died in 1878, his book illustrations and political caricatures gained him much fame and notoriety.

Other artists included John Leech, best known for his cartoons in Punch, especially those on the Crimean War, and Kate Greenaway, the children’s book artist and writer. Her 1879 best-selling publication Under the Window established her reputation.

Croydon artists had a place in the exhibition, too. One was Phiz, real name Hablot Brown, who had lived in Thornton Heath and whose sketch of the pulpit in Croydon Parish Church was used in an illustration in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. Another was Hablot Brown’s son, Gordon, who took commissions after his father had a stroke and was left partially paralysed. His first book illustrations appeared in the 1875 children’s novel by Ascott R Hope The Day after the Holidays.

The third local artist to have their work displayed was Rosa Clementina Petherick.

Petherick was born in 1871 and lived in Addiscombe. Her family was musical and creative. Rosa’s father Horace was an illustrator and artist as well as being a musician and a violin connoisseur. He owned a Stradivarius and a Del Gesu violin. Rosa was the eldest of five daughters. In the 1891 census, the girls are listed as living with their parents Horace and Clementina in Maple Lodge, 25 Havelock Road. Rosa was recorded as an art student.

One of Rosa’s early paintings, in 1892, was of her younger sister Dora, who would have been about nine at the time. Dora was captured practising her violin, except that she wasn’t! Dora was tickling with her bow her cat, who was sitting on the floor beside her. It was likely the background of that painting revealed what one of the rooms in Maple Lodge would have looked like.

Four of the five sisters grew up to become proficient musicians. By 1905, when they were in their twenties, they were appearing as the Petherick Quartet. An advert in The Strad, a musical periodical of the day, stated that the four young ladies were available for concerts, at homes, and lessons. Dora was playing the cello, Eveline the violin, Ada the piano and Leila playing the viola and singing any vocal parts.

The Pethericks were stalwarts in the Croydon music scene. A gift was given to Samuel Coleridge Taylor, the famous composer, when he got married in 1899 and the sisters played under the baton of Coleridge Taylor in the Croydon String Players’ Club.

Rosa’s skills were very much more artistic than musical, although she was briefly a member of the Streatham Symphony Orchestra. Rosa took an active part in the artistic life of Croydon, being a member of the Croydon Art Society and secretary of the Croydon Sketch Club.

She developed a career for herself in the world of book illustrations, specialising in children’s literature. She worked a great deal for the publisher Blackie and Sons. Blackie’s Children’s Annuals, produced for the Christmas market, more often than not contained a Petherick illustration. The 1925 annual also contained illustrations by another Croydon artist, Cicely Mary Barker, as well as Petherick.

Examples of Petherick’s illustrative work include Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard of Nursery Rhymes, 1903, The Abbey Girls in Town, 1925, Simple Composition Steps, 1930, and The House by the Railway 1906.

Today, several of Petherick’s illustrations are held in the V&A Museum in Kensington. Pussy stirring the Christmas Pudding, from 1900, is one of those.

Rosa became skilled at providing illustrations of elves and fairies, as well as toys, some of which came to life. With lots of young children in her pictures, on whom did she base her drawings? It would be good to think all her sisters appeared somewhere.

Thanks to Rosa’s artistic eye and painting talent, Croydon from another age can be seen again. A sketch of the new station, East Croydon, was completed in 1896. She chose railways as a theme back in the 1880s when she was first learning her craft. Her paintings of Addiscombe Station, dated 1883, include On the station platform and Catching the Train. These images provide a glimpse of a Croydon life now long gone.

Of the five Petherick sisters, only Dora married. She was wed to Albert Gibson, a cello and violin repairer. She played with various orchestras including the Redhill Society of Instrumentalists, now the Redhill Sinfonia. Dora died in Torbay in 1946.

Eveline trained at the Royal Academy of Music and became both a musician and a conductor as well as a music teacher. During the First World War she formed the Island Orchestra on the Isle of Wight. In 1921, she was living in Regency Square Brighton. She was regularly employed as a violinist by the West Pier Company. She died in Brighton in 1936, when she was living in Rugby Road.

Leila studied at the London Academy, specialising in the viola. She later set up her own business teaching singing, as well as performing herself. She died in Croydon in 1951.

Ada also studied at the London Academy. She was organist at St Mildred’s Parish Church, Addiscombe, for a short time, and was a member of the Croydon Orchestral Society. Pupils of hers, together with her sister Dora, performed at the Addiscombe Hall. She died in 1924 in the Isolation Hospital at Waddon, of diphtheria.

Rosa died in Brighton on December 20 1931, aged 60. Her younger sister Eveline was the executor of her will with a final estate which amounted to £1,530 18s 4d – worth close to £130,000 today.

Rosa’s artistic talents are yet another example of a Croydon resident flying high in the art world. Have you got any of her illustrations tucked away?

David Morgan is a former Croydon headteacher, now the volunteer education officer at Croydon Minster, who offers tours or illustrated talks on the history around the Minster for local community groups

If you would like a group tour of Croydon Minster or want to book a school visit, then ring the Minster Office on 020 688 8104 or go to the website on www.croydonminster.org and use the contact page

Some previous articles by David Morgan:

‘Professor’ played piano on Surrey Street for 5 days and nights

Struggle for survival of sawmill school and wilderness church

Tough pioneer spirit took Croydon name to the Great Lakes

The church fire that consumed a thousand years of history

For the full archive of David Morgan’s history research, click here

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