‘Alice’ by Charlotte Lawrenson. Image: Bradford Museum and Galleries Service.
‘Alice’ is a head and shoulders pencil sketch drawn in 1925 by the Irish born artist, Charlotte Lawrenson. It is in the permanent collection of the Bradford Museum and Galleries Service and was on display at Cartwright Hall, Bradford in 2025.
It illustrates a girl in her pre-teen or early teen years and appears to be the same model used by the artist for the colour painting, ‘Girl Knitting’, also dated 1925, currently in the Brighton and Hove Museums and Art Galleries collection – see below – and is likely to have been a preliminary sketch for this.
The pencil sketch is on stippled white paper, and the texture of this paper, combined with delicate pencil strokes, has the effect of emphasising the skin texture of the girl. The light source is from the top right of the drawing and Lawrenson skilfully uses the white of the paper to create the effect of light falling on the left side of her head and face.
The eyelashes are delicately drawn. The shading – on the right side of the face, below the chin, dimple of neck, and below her left ear – is also finely done. The neckline of her blouse is suggested with faint pencil lines, as are wisps of stray hair.
The drawing is a fine example of a professional artist in complete control of her medium, in this case a pencil,
Girl Knitting; Brighton and Hove Museums and Art Galleries.
The Artist
The artist was born August 1883 in Dublin and named Charlotte Mary Rose Thompson. Her father, Robert Healy Thompson, was a poet/writer, who published work under the name ‘Robert Blake’. Charlotte attended a convent school in Omagh, then studied art in London at Chelsea Art School, the Slade, and the independent Byam Shaw School of Drawing, where she won prizes for her portraiture.
Her artwork, which included lithography, was widely exhibited, including at the Royal Academy, London Salon, the Royal Society of Painters, Walker Art Gallery, and the RHA (Royal Hibernian Academy).
She married fellow Irish-born artist, Edward Louis Lawrenson, and they had one son, Ralph. She exhibited alongside her husband at the first exhibition in 1921 of the Society of Graphic Art.
Charlotte Lawrenson was a member of the Society of Mural Decorators and Painters in Tempera, and it is believed she was the first artist to exhibit in 1926 a Buon Fresco (true fresco) at a Royal Academy show. She was also commissioned to create a fresco at the Franciscan Friary in Athlone, and later another at the Priest’s House at Uckfield, Surrey.
After the death of her husband in 1940, Charlotte lived in Surrey until 1946. She then moved to Kenya and died in 1965.