Nelly Erichsen
Encyclopedia
Nelly Erichsen was an English
illustrator
and painter
. Born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, she was the daughter of a wealthy professional Danish family. After studies at the Royal Academy in the 1880s, she carved out a successful career for herself as an independent, self-supporting illustrator and writer, working with a number of publishing firms including JM Dent and Macmillan
, and jointly publishing travel books with Janet Ross
, queen bee of the Anglo-Tuscan pre-War community.
, the fourth of six children. Her father was Herman Gustav Erichsen, born in Copenhagen
in October 1826 who, after a ‘commercial education’ and travelling in Europe, came to Newcastle as a young man of just 22. Nelly’s mother Anna was also born in Denmark, one of the wealthy Suhr family, probably around 1825.
In the late 1860s Herman, originally a general trader, invested in the formation of the Great Northern Telegraph Company
and became that company’s representative in England until the time of his death, moving his family to live in Tooting
, South London. The aim of the firm was to create a worldwide telegraph company, initially by connecting England, Russia and Scandinavia by means of undersea cables. By holding the monopoly on submarine cables connecting Scandinavia with Great Britain to the west and Russia to the east, it managed to build up a telegraph system stretching from Great Britain to Japan, China and the Far East in just a few years.
Herman was a successful and well-respected man of business, with shareholdings in other telegraph businesses and companies in his native Denmark. He died on 6 December 1889 at the age of 63.
, Nelly, aged 19, is described as an art student at the Royal Academy
, and this led her to a profession which rapidly became a means to her achieving independence and some commercial success. Her first exhibit at the Royal Academy was in 1884: The Deserted Homestead. The following year, 1885, she gave her address as 2, New Court Lincoln’s Inn and had four exhibits at the Royal Academy:
Tuition at The Royal Academy was always free and entry was very competitive. Nelly must have shown real talent to have been accepted into such a prestigious organization. She began to be commissioned to produce illustrations for short stories in the English Illustrated Magazine
.
By 1891, Nelly was working from, and probably living in, Trafalgar Studios, Manresa Road, Chelsea, later the site of the South-Western Polytechnic, a forerunner of the Chelsea College of Art and Design
, which opened its doors in 1895. Her ability to set herself up as an independent and presumably self-supporting may have been assisted, or forced, by the death of her father in 1890 and the break-up of the parental home. In 1893 Nelly exhibited a picture at the Summer Exhibition
entitled Phyllis. Nelly’s painting of The Orchard was reviewed in The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. Other paintings (probably oils) from this era include The Magic Crystal, which has obvious Pre-Raphaelite
influences.
At this time, Nelly was friends with a Fabian Socialist
, Bertha Newcombe, and through her met the predatory writer George Bernard Shaw
(GBS). In 1894 Nelly engraved plates for a JM Dent limited edition of the novels of Susan Edmonstone Ferrier (Scottish novelist, 1782–1854). JM Dent, originally a bookbinder from Darlington, had founded his publishing company in London in 1888 and all his initial output consisted of limited editions of classic authors, using handmade paper and high quality bindings and illustrations.
From 1891 to 1897 Nelly was a consistently successful exhibitor at the Royal Academy, and among her works the following were shown:
By 1900 Nelly can be traced to Italy, illustrating the Lina Duff-Gordon Story of Assisi, published by JM Dent, and in the following year working with Lina’s aunt, the famous writer and hostess Janet Ross
, on Florentine Villas.
It was a busy year as 1901 also saw the publication of The Story of Rome, another in the JM Dent series, this time written by Norwood Young, and illustrated by Nelly alone. This series proved very popular - Rome reached its fifth edition in 1905, and Assisi was also published regularly until at least 1909.
In 1903 Nelly worked with Edmund Gardner
on The Story of Florence. Five years later she illustrated The Highways and Byways of Derbyshire, written by JB Firth. Nelly gets very prominent billing in this book - her name is embossed on the front cover, alongside and in equal size to that of the author. She is mentioned in the preface: "I am also more particularly indebted to Miss Erichsen not only for the charm of her illustrations but for numerous interesting details relating to persons and places".
September 1909 saw Nelly resident in Chipping Campden
, trying to persuade her publisher Mr Dent to advance her moneys. She may have gone there in connection with the community of craftsmen gathering in Chipping Campden under the leadership of CR Ashbee
- a well-known Chelsea architect, with some of his best work in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, but he was also a designer of metalwork and jewelry, a poet and writer. He was a founder of the Essex House Press, inspired by Morris’ Kelmscott Press. Chipping Campden was associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement from 1902 when Ashbee moved there with the Guild and School of Handicraft which he had founded in 1888. In particular Nelly may have been drawn through an association with FL Griggs
, one of the foremost illustrators and etchers of his day. Griggs was one of the first etchers to be elected to fellowship of the Royal Academy and like Nelly was an illustrator for the Macmillan Highways and Byways Series.
with two companions - Evangeline Whipple, who was the wealthy widow of the American Bishop Henry Whipple
, known for his evangelical work among the native Indian population. And Rose Cleveland
who was the youngest sister of Grover Cleveland
(twice President of the United States) and who had herself served as First Lady in 1885-6 before Cleveland married. Rose and Evangeline had first met in the winter of 1889-90, but finally left America to live together in 1910.
During the years of the first world war and especially after the intervention of the United States, the three women became untiring organisers of aid work for the families of townspeople called to arms, above all after the military disaster at the Battle of Caporetto
(now Kobarid
, Slovenia) in 1917. A penniless group of refugees were invited to Bagni di Lucca, and Evangeline organized at her own expense a boarding school for the children of these people run by the Stimmatine nuns, which took in around one hundred children.
In 1918 tragedy struck, when both Rose and Nelly were carried off by the 1918 flu pandemic which decimated post-war Europe. Evangeline died in London in 1930, but wanted her body to be laid to rest in Bagni di Lucca next to the tombs of the two friends who had preceded her.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
illustrator
Illustrator
An Illustrator is a narrative artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...
and painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
. Born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, she was the daughter of a wealthy professional Danish family. After studies at the Royal Academy in the 1880s, she carved out a successful career for herself as an independent, self-supporting illustrator and writer, working with a number of publishing firms including JM Dent and Macmillan
Macmillan Publishers
Macmillan Publishers Ltd, also known as The Macmillan Group, is a privately held international publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.-History:...
, and jointly publishing travel books with Janet Ross
Janet Ross
-Early life:Janet Duff Gordon was the daughter of Sir Alexander Duff-Gordon and Lucie, Lady Duff-Gordon. Her father held a number of government positions, including Commissioner of Inland Revenue and her mother wrote the classic Letters from Egypt...
, queen bee of the Anglo-Tuscan pre-War community.
Family history
Nelly Erichsen was born on 9 December 1862 in Newcastle upon TyneNewcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...
, the fourth of six children. Her father was Herman Gustav Erichsen, born in Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
in October 1826 who, after a ‘commercial education’ and travelling in Europe, came to Newcastle as a young man of just 22. Nelly’s mother Anna was also born in Denmark, one of the wealthy Suhr family, probably around 1825.
In the late 1860s Herman, originally a general trader, invested in the formation of the Great Northern Telegraph Company
Great Northern Telegraph Company
The Great Northern Telegraph Company was a Danish telegraph company founded in June 1869...
and became that company’s representative in England until the time of his death, moving his family to live in Tooting
Tooting
Tooting is a district in south London, England, located in the London Borough of Wandsworth. It is situated south south-west of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.-History:...
, South London. The aim of the firm was to create a worldwide telegraph company, initially by connecting England, Russia and Scandinavia by means of undersea cables. By holding the monopoly on submarine cables connecting Scandinavia with Great Britain to the west and Russia to the east, it managed to build up a telegraph system stretching from Great Britain to Japan, China and the Far East in just a few years.
Herman was a successful and well-respected man of business, with shareholdings in other telegraph businesses and companies in his native Denmark. He died on 6 December 1889 at the age of 63.
Artistic career
In the 1881 CensusCensus in the United Kingdom
Coincident full censuses have taken place in the different jurisdictions of the United Kingdom every ten years since 1801, with the exceptions of 1941 and in both Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State in 1921; simultaneous censuses were taken in the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, with...
, Nelly, aged 19, is described as an art student at the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
, and this led her to a profession which rapidly became a means to her achieving independence and some commercial success. Her first exhibit at the Royal Academy was in 1884: The Deserted Homestead. The following year, 1885, she gave her address as 2, New Court Lincoln’s Inn and had four exhibits at the Royal Academy:
- A descendant of the Danes
- No truly, she is too disdainful
- Briars and Brambles
- A study
Tuition at The Royal Academy was always free and entry was very competitive. Nelly must have shown real talent to have been accepted into such a prestigious organization. She began to be commissioned to produce illustrations for short stories in the English Illustrated Magazine
English Illustrated Magazine
The English Illustrated Magazine was a monthly publication that ran for 359 issues between October 1883 and August 1913. Features included travel, topography, and a large amount of fiction and were contributed by writers such as Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Stanley J. Weyman and Max Pemberton...
.
By 1891, Nelly was working from, and probably living in, Trafalgar Studios, Manresa Road, Chelsea, later the site of the South-Western Polytechnic, a forerunner of the Chelsea College of Art and Design
Chelsea College of Art and Design
Chelsea College of Art and Design, the erstwhile Chelsea School of Art, is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, and is a leading British art and design institution with an international reputation...
, which opened its doors in 1895. Her ability to set herself up as an independent and presumably self-supporting may have been assisted, or forced, by the death of her father in 1890 and the break-up of the parental home. In 1893 Nelly exhibited a picture at the Summer Exhibition
Royal Academy summer exhibition
The Summer Exhibition is an open art exhibition held annually by the Royal Academy in Burlington House, Piccadilly in central London, England, during the summer months of June, July, and August...
entitled Phyllis. Nelly’s painting of The Orchard was reviewed in The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. Other paintings (probably oils) from this era include The Magic Crystal, which has obvious Pre-Raphaelite
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti...
influences.
At this time, Nelly was friends with a Fabian Socialist
Fabian Society
The Fabian Society is a British socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means. It is best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning late in the 19th century and continuing up to World...
, Bertha Newcombe, and through her met the predatory writer George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
(GBS). In 1894 Nelly engraved plates for a JM Dent limited edition of the novels of Susan Edmonstone Ferrier (Scottish novelist, 1782–1854). JM Dent, originally a bookbinder from Darlington, had founded his publishing company in London in 1888 and all his initial output consisted of limited editions of classic authors, using handmade paper and high quality bindings and illustrations.
From 1891 to 1897 Nelly was a consistently successful exhibitor at the Royal Academy, and among her works the following were shown:
- The Magic Crystal (1891)
- Out of the deep have I cried unto thee (1892)
- The Emperor’s New Clothes (1897)
By 1900 Nelly can be traced to Italy, illustrating the Lina Duff-Gordon Story of Assisi, published by JM Dent, and in the following year working with Lina’s aunt, the famous writer and hostess Janet Ross
Janet Ross
-Early life:Janet Duff Gordon was the daughter of Sir Alexander Duff-Gordon and Lucie, Lady Duff-Gordon. Her father held a number of government positions, including Commissioner of Inland Revenue and her mother wrote the classic Letters from Egypt...
, on Florentine Villas.
It was a busy year as 1901 also saw the publication of The Story of Rome, another in the JM Dent series, this time written by Norwood Young, and illustrated by Nelly alone. This series proved very popular - Rome reached its fifth edition in 1905, and Assisi was also published regularly until at least 1909.
In 1903 Nelly worked with Edmund Gardner
Edmund Garratt Gardner
Edmund Garratt Gardner FBA was an English scholar and writer, specializing in Italian history and literature. At the beginning of the twentieth century, he was regarded as one of the foremost British Dante scholars.-Career:...
on The Story of Florence. Five years later she illustrated The Highways and Byways of Derbyshire, written by JB Firth. Nelly gets very prominent billing in this book - her name is embossed on the front cover, alongside and in equal size to that of the author. She is mentioned in the preface: "I am also more particularly indebted to Miss Erichsen not only for the charm of her illustrations but for numerous interesting details relating to persons and places".
September 1909 saw Nelly resident in Chipping Campden
Chipping Campden
Chipping Campden is a small market town within the Cotswold district of Gloucestershire, England. It is notable for its elegant terraced High Street, dating from the 14th century to the 17th century...
, trying to persuade her publisher Mr Dent to advance her moneys. She may have gone there in connection with the community of craftsmen gathering in Chipping Campden under the leadership of CR Ashbee
Charles Robert Ashbee
Charles Robert Ashbee was an English designer and entrepreneur who was a prime mover of the Arts and Crafts movement that took its craft ethic from the works of John Ruskin and its co-operative structure from the socialism of William Morris.-Early life:He was the son of businessman and erotic...
- a well-known Chelsea architect, with some of his best work in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, but he was also a designer of metalwork and jewelry, a poet and writer. He was a founder of the Essex House Press, inspired by Morris’ Kelmscott Press. Chipping Campden was associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement from 1902 when Ashbee moved there with the Guild and School of Handicraft which he had founded in 1888. In particular Nelly may have been drawn through an association with FL Griggs
F. L. Griggs
Frederick Landseer Maur Griggs, RA, RE was a distinguished English etcher, architectural draughtsman, illustrator, and early conservationist, associated with the late flowering of the Arts and Crafts movement in the Cotswolds...
, one of the foremost illustrators and etchers of his day. Griggs was one of the first etchers to be elected to fellowship of the Royal Academy and like Nelly was an illustrator for the Macmillan Highways and Byways Series.
Final years in Italy
From 1912 until November 1918, Nelly was living in the quiet Tuscan spa town of Bagni di LuccaBagni di Lucca
Bagni di Lucca is a comune of Tuscany, Italy, in the Province of Lucca with a population of c. 6,500.-History:Bagni di Lucca was known for its thermal springs since the Etruscan and Roman Ages....
with two companions - Evangeline Whipple, who was the wealthy widow of the American Bishop Henry Whipple
Henry Benjamin Whipple
Henry Benjamin Whipple was the first Episcopal bishop of Minnesota, a humanitarian and an advocate for Native Americans.-Summary of his life:...
, known for his evangelical work among the native Indian population. And Rose Cleveland
Rose Cleveland
Rose Elizabeth Cleveland , was the First Lady of the United States from 1885 to 1886, during the first of her brother U.S. President Grover Cleveland's two administrations.-Biography:...
who was the youngest sister of Grover Cleveland
Grover Cleveland
Stephen Grover Cleveland was the 22nd and 24th president of the United States. Cleveland is the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms and therefore is the only individual to be counted twice in the numbering of the presidents...
(twice President of the United States) and who had herself served as First Lady in 1885-6 before Cleveland married. Rose and Evangeline had first met in the winter of 1889-90, but finally left America to live together in 1910.
During the years of the first world war and especially after the intervention of the United States, the three women became untiring organisers of aid work for the families of townspeople called to arms, above all after the military disaster at the Battle of Caporetto
Battle of Caporetto
The Battle of Caporetto , took place from 24 October to 19 November 1917, near the town of Kobarid , on the Austro-Italian front of World War I...
(now Kobarid
Kobarid
Kobarid is a town and a municipality in the upper Soča valley, western Slovenia, near the Italian border.Kobarid is known for the famous Battle of Caporetto, where the Italian retreat was documented by Ernest Hemingway in his novel A Farewell to Arms. The battle is well documented in the museum in...
, Slovenia) in 1917. A penniless group of refugees were invited to Bagni di Lucca, and Evangeline organized at her own expense a boarding school for the children of these people run by the Stimmatine nuns, which took in around one hundred children.
In 1918 tragedy struck, when both Rose and Nelly were carried off by the 1918 flu pandemic which decimated post-war Europe. Evangeline died in London in 1930, but wanted her body to be laid to rest in Bagni di Lucca next to the tombs of the two friends who had preceded her.