Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1878 Melbourne, Australia

Died: 1930 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1905

Other name/s: Bess Norris, Bess Norris Tait, Elizabeth Norris, Elizabeth Norris Tait, Bess Norriss Tait, Elizabeth Norriss, Elizabeth Norriss Tait, J. Navin Tait

Biography

Miniature painter Elizabeth (Bess) May Norriss was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1878. Between 1897 and 1901 she studied at the Melbourne National Gallery School under Frederick McCubbin and began exhibiting watercolours and miniatures with the Victorian Art Society. At the instigation of one of her first patrons, she sent examples of her miniatures to London expert George Williamson, who recognised the quality of her work and encouraged her to go to England.

Having taken six years to save the fare, she arrived in London in December 1905, where Williamson introduced her to influential critics and potential patrons who admired her originality. She quickly attained critical acclaim for the freshness and originality of her style and in 1907 was made a member of the Royal Society of Miniature Painters. Later she developed a preference for painting watercolours on a larger scale and became a member of the British Watercolour Society. In 1906 she took a studio at 49 Roland Gardens, South Kensington, where her sitters included Lydia Russell (née Burton), married to the portrait painter Walter Russell, who was also a teacher at the Slade School of Fine Art, where Norriss was an intermittent student. The Lydia Russell miniature was exhibited in the New Salon, Paris, and at the Royal Academy, London in 1908, receiving favourable reviews in the Australian press, and again, in 1910, when Norriss exhibited it in Sydney with other miniatures. Norriss broke with the old tradition of what she described as 'superficial, pretty, chocolate-box miniatures', popular at the turn of the century. She dispensed with the traditional hallmarks of the Victorian and Edwardian miniature, abandoning stippling to paint in a fluid style and with a spontaneity which distinguished her work. She believed that miniature painting should be governed by the same technical disciplines as large-scale paintings, with attention being paid to 'drawing, structure and colour'. In 1908 she exhibited her miniature self-portrait (now in the National Portrait Gallery, London) at the Royal Academy under the title The Brown Hat. Many of her portraits were essentially idealised depictions of upper middle-class women in languid poses, the emphasis being on the beauty and the costume of the sitters, yet they were also notable for their psychological insight. As one London critic noted in 1913, her portraits were 'painted with spirit' as well as being 'unconventionally composed and full of character, but not the smiling character usually associated with miniature'. Instead, according to one observer, her paintings were 'miniatures in size only' and marked by their ability to express, sometimes in minute and delicate scale, a rare sense of a sitter's personality.

In 1908 Norriss married Australian theatre entrepreneur James Nevin Tait in London and through him developed associations with the community of creative Australian expats including the composer Percy Grainger, the soprano Nellie Melba, and the singer Ada Crossley. After her marriage she travelled extensively in Africa and Australia, where she held exhibitions in Sydney and Melbourne and carried out portrait commissions in both cities. She returned to London in 1911 and settled in Chelsea. Her patrons included Queen Alexandra, J. Pierpont Morgan (who paid 100 guineas for his miniature portrait) and well-known artists and musicians. She was a long-standing friend of the British painter Tom Roberts and sculptor Francis Derwent Wood whose bronze sculpture of her (c. 1921, Tate), made as a token of their friendship, was exhibited at the Royal Academy. Norriss exhibited miniatures and watercolours with the Royal Society of Miniature Painters, at the Grosvenor Galleries, the Royal Academy and the Paris Salon and was chosen to paint the miniatures in Queen Mary's Dolls' House at Windsor Castle. A review of her large solo exhibition held at the Walker Galleries in 1938, attended by Queen Mary, The Sphere commented: 'her charming and delicate-water colour portraits, miniatures and figure studies make a very delightful show. The work displayed covers a period of over a quarter of a century, and one notices rather astonishing changes in fashion and hairdressing in her various studies, which gave an added interest to the exhibition. Among an innumerable assortment of daintily-tinted portraits, her sanguined drawing of herself stands out as a sparkling and spontaneous piece of work, which at the same time is an amazing likeness of the artist'. Bess Norriss died in Chelsea, London, in January 1939. Her work is in UK collections including the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Related books

Liz Rideal, Whitney Chadwick and Frances Borzello (eds.), Mirror: Self-portraits by Women Artists (New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2002)
Jean Campbell, Australian Watercolour Painters, 1780 to the Present Day (Roseville: Craftsman House, 1989)
Caroline Ambrus, The Ladies' Picture Show: Sources on a Century of Australian Women Artists (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1984)
'Contemporary Art in London', The Sphere, 22 October 1938
'The Work of Bess Norriss', Art in Australia, November 1922
'The Cult of the Miniature: Portraits (and Poetics) at the Modern Gallery', The Bystander, 10 February, 1909

Public collections

Related organisations

Slade School of Art (student, 1897–1901)

Selected exhibitions

Australian and European Miniatures from the Collection, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2005)
A Century of Australian Women's Art (1880s–1990s), Angeloro Fine Art Galleries, Artarmon, Australia (1995)
Exhibition of Miniatures and Watercolours, Walker's Galleries, London (1938)
Royal Academy (1936)
International Surrealist Exhibition, Burlington Galleries (1936)
Royal Academy (1934)
Royal Cambrian Academy, Plas Mawr, Conwy, Wales (1930, 1929, 1927)
Royal Society of Portrait Painters (1926)
Watercolour Drawings & Miniatures by Bess Norriss, W. B. Paterson's Gallery, Glasgow (1924)
War and Peace Including War Pictures Painted for and Lent by the Commonwealth of Australia, Royal Academy (1918)
Royal Academy (1923, 1921, 1920, 1918, 1916, 1915, 1914)
Royal Society of Miniature Painters (1916 and 1915)
Royal Academy of Arts (1913, 1912, 1911)
Royal Society of Miniature Painters (1911)
Modern Gallery, Bond Street (1909)
Royal Academy (1908)
New Salon, Paris, France (1908)
Miniatures and Water Colour Drawings by Miss Bess Norriss, Stafford Gallery, London (1907)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Beth Norriss]