
Painter, designer, draughtsman and teacher, born in London, where she continued to work. She was married to the designer Tom Eckersley. Kessell studied at Clapham School of Art, 1935–7, and the Central School of Arts and Crafts, 1937–9. In 1937 she was commissioned to illustrate Osbert Sitwell’s book Mrs Kimber, then shortly after she began painting, in 1939, she executed the Judith and Holofernes mural at Westminster Hospital. In 1945 she travelled through Germany as an Official War Artist, visiting Belsen and Berlin; her journal and the resulting pictures are often harrowing, extracts from the diary being published in The Cornhill magazine in 1946. Had her initial solo show at Leicester Galleries in 1950, the first of a series, also showing at New Grafton Gallery in 1969.
Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)