(Ellen) Ethel Martin, painter, was eldest of three daughters – Beatrix and Dorothy being second and third – of James and Mary Ellen Martin of Sevenoaks, Kent: the youngest child was Henry Lloyd Martin, who like his father became a stockbroker and member of the London Stock Exchange but died as a First World War army captain in September 1916. Ethel was born at Sevenoaks on 4th September 1873, baptised at Shipborne on 9th October, and educated at a private school in Sevenoaks and later at Hampstead High School. Where she trained in art is not known but she became a regular exhibitor of portraits and landscapes. At the Royal Academy in 1900, as from ‘Woodhall, Sevenoaks’, she showed a coastal view of Boutigues Chasm, Sark (Channel Islands) which had been a highlight of an exhibition of 150 pictures by local artists that she and her sister Beatrix (1876–1964) arranged at the Lime Tree Studio, Sevenoaks, in December 1899 (review in the Sevenoaks Chronicle, 5th January 1900).
By 1904, however, when Ethel exhibited two townscapes of Caudebec, Normandy, at the Royal Academy, she was working at 3 Stanley Studios, Park Walk, Chelsea, and it is likely that she was there from 1902 given that in February–March 1903 her work was part of a three-hander exhibition at the Doré Gallery, London, again with Beatrix. The bold landscapes of both were well-reviewed by the Evening Standard (5th March) and Ethel’s contribution included her portrait of the elderly writer and friend of George Eliot, Caroline Bray (1814–1905, see ODNB) now in the Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry. The third person involved was the artist and writer Ernest David Fridlander (1870–1960) through whom Ethel had probably met Bray since she was a friend of his father, a Coventry watchmaker.
Ethel and Fridlander married at Chelsea on 12th January 1905 and her RA entries were subsequently as ‘Martin, E. (Mrs. E. D. Fridlander)’. In 1905 this was still from Stanley Studios but she and her husband probably soon moved to 33 Canfield Gardens, Hampstead, which was her RA submission address in 1911, 1912 and 1915. On 19th April 1912, the Coventry Herald, citing the East Grinstead Observer of 13th, reported a group show continuing to the 29th by the Martin sisters and Fridlander – presumably at East Grinstead – noting that Ethel had also by then exhibited at the Grafton Gallery and Royal Society of Oil Painters. In 1914 (7th–28th January) the Baillie Gallery, Bruton Street, also held a private exhibition of Paintings and drawings by Ethel Martin (Mrs. E.D. Fridlander), Beatrix Martin, E.D. Fridlander, Ann Maitland, [and] Harriet Halhed (catalogue in the National Art Library).
By 1920 the Fridlanders moved to 6 Prince Arthur Road, Hampstead, remaining there to their deaths: Beatrix Martin also lived with them in this large house. In 1926, at the 13th Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society show at the Royal Academy, both sisters exhibited examples of lacework (case no. 236) using the surname Martin and as from Prince Arthur Road (with Mrs E. D. Fridlander only in the address index). The 1939 Register also shows all three, with Ernest’s unmarried sister Annie Esther (1864– 1963), temporarily staying at Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire. Ethel exhibited at the RA only once again in 1946. Her husband died in June 1960, her sister in October 1964 and she followed on 11th January 1969, still at Prince Arthur Road, leaving estate valued at £72,251. The fact that her work – and her husband’s and sister’s – has largely disappeared suggests that, however much they did or sold, all mainly had independent income rather than being dependent on art. Harry Levine, in his book The Jews of Coventry (1970) suggests that Ethel ‘was a gifted artist who subordinated her own art to that of her husband’, though his work is even less apparent today than hers.
Summarised from Art UK’s Art Detective discussion ‘Could Ethel Martin Frimston be the same artist as Ethel Martin?’ and information from the Bluecoat Library, Liverpool. This was a case of separating artists both named ‘Ethel Martin’.
Text source: Art Detective
