Mary Smith was born in Bury, Lancashire, on 29th February 1904, third surviving child and only daughter of Henry Wilfred Parker and his wife Helen Durley (née Yates). Of her three elder brothers (b.1901–1902), the immediately preceding two were twins, one of whom died a few months after birth: a younger brother followed in 1908. Henry Parker ran a cotton-bleach works at Elton, Bury, founded by his father Joseph, following whose death he became director until it closed after the Second World War. Mary attended Bury High School and Bury School of Art, of which the headmaster, Joseph Knight (1870–1952), encouraged her to apply for the Slade School. She was admitted in 1923, when her father asked his Leeds-born first cousin, Sidney Smith (1889–1979), to become a family friend to her in London.
Smith was also Mary’s older first cousin once removed, since his father (also Sidney) was brother to her paternal grandmother, Hannah Parker (née Smith). An Assyriologist and Assistant Keeper at the British Museum, he had then just returned from being epigraphist to Leonard Woolley’s 1922–1923 excavations at Ur, in Iraq.
At the Slade, Mary studied painting under Henry Tonks and Philip Wilson Steer and in 1925, while living at 11 Taviton Street, Gordon Square, she exhibited two works at the New English Art Club as ‘Mary W. Parker’: this remained her signature to about 1939. In 1926 – her final Slade year – she won its First Prize (equal) for her Portrait of a Bearded Old Man, now in the UCL Art Museum. She was subsequently invited to help Rex Whistler paint decorative murals for the new ‘Queen Mary’ but later said she was ‘too shy’ to accept.
She was, however, bold enough to visit Paris with Sidney Smith and become engaged to him. They married at Bury early in 1927 and were living at 35 Parkhill Road, Hampstead, when their son Henry Sidney (‘Harry’) was born on 14th June 1928. Late in 1928 and on the recommendation of Richard Cooke, interim and controversial local successor to Gertrude Bell (d.1926), founder-director of the Iraq Museum and the Syrian Antiquities Service, Sidney Smith was seconded from the British Museum to replace him.
The appointment formally began on 6th January 1929 and Mary went with him, leaving their son Harry in nursing care. In Baghdad the Smiths became good friends of the archaeologist Max Mallowan and his wife, the crime writer Agatha Christie, who in 1942 dedicated her novel The Moving Finger to them. When Christie’s house, ‘Greenway’, in Devon, passed to the National Trust in 2006, the gift of contents from her children included Mary’s 1930 gouache painting of New Street, Baghdad (now Rashid Street). This had been a later gift to the Mallowans and is signed ‘Mary W. Parker’.
In December 1930, on the death of the British Museum’s Keeper of Assyrian Antiquities, Dr H. W. Hall, Sidney was appointed to the post with immediate effect and the Smiths returned to London in January 1931. They bought a house at 7 Fellows Road, Belsize Park, where their daughter Zoe was born on 17th October 1933 and Mary continued to paint, with her husband’s encouragement, despite growing family calls on her time including the needs of his elderly parents. In March 1934, with Katherine Hartnell and Lilian Whitehead, she shared a two-week show at the Beaux Arts Gallery, London.
From late 1939, on the outbreak of war, she and the children spent a year with her parents in Bury until Zoe was evacuated to the USA (1940–1944) and Harry went to boarding school (1940–1946). Her husband remained at Fellows Road until it was blast-damaged by a parachute-mine in 1941 (and later demolished). Both did voluntary war work and continued with their own as well as they could: in 1943 he was offered the No. 1 Residence at the British Museum, where the family joined him. In 1947 and 1948 Mary’s first four paintings at the Royal Academy were exhibited from there. Reflection (in a mirror, 1947) is a portrait of Zoe, of whom she showed another in 1948, with Undergraduate: this was presumably of Harry, then at Cambridge University. The Reflection portrait is now in Bury Art Museum. One entitled Girl with a Book which shows Zoe at the same age and similarly dressed is probably that shown at the Royal Academy in 1948 but was purchased by Manchester Art Gallery (for £30) when exhibited at the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts exhibition of 1956.
Mary’s second RA canvas in 1947 was one of Pears and she exhibited a further 16 paintings there up to 1965, generally interiors, still lifes and landscapes. One a year appeared in 1950–1951 and 1960–1963; two in 1952, 1954, 1957 and 1958; and three in 1965. A further nine oils were shown at New English Art Club exhibitions between 1944 and 1951 (1948 and 1950 excepted), of which four were unidentified portrait subjects.
Her 1970 entry in Who’s Who in Art also mentions exhibition at the Manchester Academy, the London Group, the Womens’ International Art Club (this being from after 1945) and in ‘provincial galleries’, with ‘Dieppe’ added in the 1977 edition. The post-war RA listings suggest that she by then signed ‘Mary W. Smith’ up to 1951 and ‘Mary Smith’ thereafter. She also deployed her talents to draw the maps and other illustrations in her husband’s scholarly publications and had work reproduced in The Lady magazine.
In or shortly after 1948, when Sidney took up the new Chair of Ancient Semitic Languages and Civilisations at the University of London (SOAS), they and Zoe moved to a flat at 15 Courtfield Road, South Kensington, where Mary continued to paint using a confined space on an upstairs landing. According to her son, she seems to have kept no record of her work, or where it went (often as gifts). For economic reasons, and throughout her life, she also often reused canvases, including examples that had been exhibited, and some of her earlier work was damaged or destroyed by the 1941 bomb blast at Fellows Road. Around 1930 (as in New Street Baghdad) she used egg tempera but her other surviving works seem to be largely in oil.
On Sidney’s university retirement in 1955, the Smiths moved to Cawthorne House, Barcombe, near Lewes in Sussex. Mary’s painting of a Sussex farm (exh. RA, 1962), purchased by London County Council, is now in the Lewisham collection: another bought by Hertfordshire County Council is not currently traced. In October 1959, Zoe Smith married at Barcombe to John Swinburne Ellingworth (1929–2011), and in 1961 emigrated to Australia, where he had grown up and was in business, though born in London.
Sidney Smith died in June 1979, aged 89, after which Mary began to show early signs of dementia. In 1982 she joined her daughter’s family in Melbourne and later moved with them to near Dalmeny, NSW, where she spent her last years in care and died on 11th September 1992.
In 1970 Harry Smith became Edwards Professor of Egyptology at University College, London (Emeritus, 1986) and was also Curator of its Petrie Museum: in 2018 its Friends organised a celebration of his 90th birthday. His sister Zoe finally lived in Bega, NSW, and died there on 9th August 2022.
Summarised from Art UK's Art Detective discussion 'Further information sought on the artist Mary W. Parker (b. Bury, 1904)' and from extra notes kindly provided by Professor Harry Smith in July 2019.
At the Slade, Mary studied painting under Henry Tonks and Philip Wilson Steer and in 1925, while living at 11 Taviton Street, Gordon Square, she exhibited two works at the New English Art Club as ‘Mary W. Parker’: this remained her signature to about 1939. In 1926 – her final Slade year – she won its First Prize (equal) for her Portrait of a Bearded Old Man, now in the UCL Art Museum. She was subsequently invited to help Rex Whistler paint decorative murals for the new ‘Queen Mary’ but later said she was ‘too shy’ to accept.
She was, however, bold enough to visit Paris with Sidney Smith and become engaged to him. They married at Bury early in 1927 and were living at 35 Parkhill Road, Hampstead, when their son Henry Sidney (‘Harry’) was born on 14th June 1928. Late in 1928 and on the recommendation of Richard Cooke, interim and controversial local successor to Gertrude Bell (d.1926), founder-director of the Iraq Museum and the Syrian Antiquities Service, Sidney Smith was seconded from the British Museum to replace him.
The appointment formally began on 6th January 1929 and Mary went with him, leaving their son Harry in nursing care. In Baghdad the Smiths became good friends of the archaeologist Max Mallowan and his wife, the crime writer Agatha Christie, who in 1942 dedicated her novel The Moving Finger to them. When Christie’s house, ‘Greenway’, in Devon, passed to the National Trust in 2006, the gift of contents from her children included Mary’s 1930 gouache painting of New Street, Baghdad (now Rashid Street). This had been a later gift to the Mallowans and is signed ‘Mary W. Parker’.
In December 1930, on the death of the British Museum’s Keeper of Assyrian Antiquities, Dr H. W. Hall, Sidney was appointed to the post with immediate effect and the Smiths returned to London in January 1931. They bought a house at 7 Fellows Road, Belsize Park, where their daughter Zoe was born on 17th October 1933 and Mary continued to paint, with her husband’s encouragement, despite growing family calls on her time including the needs of his elderly parents. In March 1934, with Katherine Hartnell and Lilian Whitehead, she shared a two-week show at the Beaux Arts Gallery, London.
From late 1939, on the outbreak of war, she and the children spent a year with her parents in Bury until Zoe was evacuated to the USA (1940–1944) and Harry went to boarding school (1940–1946). Her husband remained at Fellows Road until it was blast-damaged by a parachute-mine in 1941 (and later demolished). Both did voluntary war work and continued with their own as well as they could: in 1943 he was offered the No. 1 Residence at the British Museum, where the family joined him. In 1947 and 1948 Mary’s first four paintings at the Royal Academy were exhibited from there. Reflection (in a mirror, 1947) is a portrait of Zoe, of whom she showed another in 1948, with Undergraduate: this was presumably of Harry, then at Cambridge University. The Reflection portrait is now in Bury Art Museum. One entitled Girl with a Book which shows Zoe at the same age and similarly dressed is probably that shown at the Royal Academy in 1948 but was purchased by Manchester Art Gallery (for £30) when exhibited at the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts exhibition of 1956.
Mary’s second RA canvas in 1947 was one of Pears and she exhibited a further 16 paintings there up to 1965, generally interiors, still lifes and landscapes. One a year appeared in 1950–1951 and 1960–1963; two in 1952, 1954, 1957 and 1958; and three in 1965. A further nine oils were shown at New English Art Club exhibitions between 1944 and 1951 (1948 and 1950 excepted), of which four were unidentified portrait subjects.
Her 1970 entry in Who’s Who in Art also mentions exhibition at the Manchester Academy, the London Group, the Womens’ International Art Club (this being from after 1945) and in ‘provincial galleries’, with ‘Dieppe’ added in the 1977 edition. The post-war RA listings suggest that she by then signed ‘Mary W. Smith’ up to 1951 and ‘Mary Smith’ thereafter. She also deployed her talents to draw the maps and other illustrations in her husband’s scholarly publications and had work reproduced in The Lady magazine.
In or shortly after 1948, when Sidney took up the new Chair of Ancient Semitic Languages and Civilisations at the University of London (SOAS), they and Zoe moved to a flat at 15 Courtfield Road, South Kensington, where Mary continued to paint using a confined space on an upstairs landing. According to her son, she seems to have kept no record of her work, or where it went (often as gifts). For economic reasons, and throughout her life, she also often reused canvases, including examples that had been exhibited, and some of her earlier work was damaged or destroyed by the 1941 bomb blast at Fellows Road. Around 1930 (as in New Street Baghdad) she used egg tempera but her other surviving works seem to be largely in oil.
On Sidney’s university retirement in 1955, the Smiths moved to Cawthorne House, Barcombe, near Lewes in Sussex. Mary’s painting of a Sussex farm (exh. RA, 1962), purchased by London County Council, is now in the Lewisham collection: another bought by Hertfordshire County Council is not currently traced. In October 1959, Zoe Smith married at Barcombe to John Swinburne Ellingworth (1929–2011), and in 1961 emigrated to Australia, where he had grown up and was in business, though born in London.
Sidney Smith died in June 1979, aged 89, after which Mary began to show early signs of dementia. In 1982 she joined her daughter’s family in Melbourne and later moved with them to near Dalmeny, NSW, where she spent her last years in care and died on 11th September 1992.
In 1970 Harry Smith became Edwards Professor of Egyptology at University College, London (Emeritus, 1986) and was also Curator of its Petrie Museum: in 2018 its Friends organised a celebration of his 90th birthday. His sister Zoe finally lived in Bega, NSW, and died there on 9th August 2022.
Summarised from Art UK's Art Detective discussion 'Further information sought on the artist Mary W. Parker (b. Bury, 1904)' and from extra notes kindly provided by Professor Harry Smith in July 2019.
Text source: Art Detective
