(Caroline) Ethel Martin, Liverpool painter and sculptor, was born at 18 Strand Street, Liverpool on 19th June 1880, the fifth and youngest child of William Martin, a Cornish-born flag manufacturer, and his wife Ann. Martin appears to have become a student at University College Liverpool's Applied Art Department, known as ‘The Art Sheds’. In 1905 she exhibited sculptural pieces at the Walker Art Gallery and became a member of the Liverpool Academy in 1906. In 1905 she was also one of a group who set up the Sandon Terrace Studios (later the Sandon Studios Society) as an alternative art school, based at 9 Sandon Terrace, Duke Street: the Society then leased studio and social space from 1907 in Liverpool’s former eighteenth-century Bluecoat School building, at that time vacant.
She was also involved locally in that movement – including at the Bluecoat – and apparently a keen participant in the Sandon's fancy dress parties there. The Sandon Society’s involvement at the Bluecoat in effect developed it into the first arts centre in the UK, established as the Bluecoat Society of Arts in 1927. The first Sandon exhibition took place there in 1908, including drawings and paintings by Martin. She also exhibited in Sandon shows in 1910, 1911 and 1914. Of these the 1911 post-Impressionist show was considered groundbreaking, including works by Picasso, Van Gogh, Gauguin and Matisse, but also adding local artists. Martin’s contributions were a painting of Boats, Urn from Dove Park (plaster) and The Sphinx, a bronze commissioned for Charles Reilly’s new Students’ Union building at Liverpool University.
In 1916 Martin’s works including an ‘interior’, a flower piece and several ‘hill scenes’ were praised at the Society of Modern Painters exhibition in Manchester. In 1930 a watercolour by her exhibited at the Merseyside Art Circle show at the Rushworth Galley was described as ‘a little alarming, but highly interesting’.
Martin married at Toxteth Park in the last quarter of 1910 to Edward Noel Frimston, a Liverpool cotton broker. The couple had two children, John David and Joan Ann. Ethel remained long connected with the Sandon and Bluecoat Societies and in 1932 gave a talk at the Bluecoat with her friend and Sandon socialite member, Maud Budden, about a visit they had made to Russia. She died at Neston in the Wirral on 1st August 1940.
Summarised from Art UK's Art Detective discussion ‘Could Ethel Martin Frimston be the same artist as Ethel Martin?'
Text source: Art Detective
