Tag: Dame Mary Bolles

Plain Portraits

Liz White

After my woodcut experiment in Adobe Illustrator, l’ve gone for more of a lithographic effect for these portraits, simplifying the tones in my original pen and wash drawings into ragged-edged blocks. You don’t get the texture of the original watercolour wash but it’s implied in those irregular edges.

This is Liz White in character as Fiona Grayson in Chris Lang’s ITV crime drama Unforgotten, drawn from a photograph in the Radio Times in March.

George Stephenson

George Stephenson
George Stephenson

It can be disappointing if you’ve painted a subtle watercolour and the nuances are lost on the printed page. A reduced tonal range might make for a more successful printed image. I’ll have to try it.

George Stephenson was all set to have a walk-on part in my current Addingford show at the Redbox Gallery, Horbury, but he was upstaged by Stan Barstow’s Joby, so perhaps I can use him in a print publication, looking suitably robust in the Image Trace treatment that I’ve given him in Illustrator.

Hepworth

Barbara Hepworth
Barbara Hepworth

I’m considering printing the series I drew of Wakefield Women in History and the graphic feel would work well as I’m trying to keep the subject brisk and lively, rather than making it archival and authoritative, like an illustrated Dictionary of National Biography.

Dame Mary Bolles

Dame Mary Bolles

Another Wakefield Woman in History, Dame Mary Bolles, the formidable Stuart-era lady of Heath Old Hall, also lends herself to this treatment. It’s easy for me to go for too much detail in a historical costume but what I want in this series is to sum up remarkable lives in broad brushstrokes.

Dame Mary Bolles

Dame Mary Bolles

Dame Mary Bolles was born in the reign of Elizabeth I and died, aged 81, on 5 May 1662, in the reign of Charles II. She remains the only woman to have been awarded a baronetcy, in her case the Baronetcy of Nova Scotia, bestowed on her by Charles I in 1635.

water tower

She’s probably best known in Wakefield for the Water Tower, which she had constructed to pump a water supply up to Heath Old Hall. There are suggestions that it also supplied Heath Village and possibly an ironworks.

Dame Mary Bolles

I haven’t found a portrait of her, other than the effigy on her memorial in Ledston Church, so these are my attempts to imagine her as a cavalier lady at the time she became a baronet(ess?). The terms of her will called on her executors to open the Hall to guests and to slaughter as many of her fat sheep and cattle as necessary for the funeral feasting, which was to last six weeks. According to some accounts, she also stipulated that a particular room in the house should be left locked until 50 years after her death.

The Old Hall fell into ruin after being used as a supply store during World War II, but the original door of Dame Mary’s room, reputedly a haunted door, can be seen in Wakefield Museum.