Biography

Rosemary was born in 1912 in Kings Norton, Birmingham, the daughter of Reverend John Finlay Rutherford. In 1929, the family moved to Broomfield, near Chelmsford, where John Rutherford became vicar of the parish. Rosemary attended the Slade School of Fine Art, London during the 1930s and by 1939 was teaching part-time at St Cedd’s School, Chelmsford, while still living at the vicarage in Broomfield.

Working as a volunteer with the Red Cross during the Second World War, she was given permission by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee to make visual records of her work, despite not being given an official commission as a War Artist. She produced a body of work which included paintings and drawings of military installations and equipment; ‘The Listeners’ (1) a watercolour of a mobile acoustic listening device, is an excellent example of this period of her work. Part of her work with the Voluntary Aid Detachment involved driving around East Anglia in a mobile canteen, visiting gun batteries as well as nursing duties in hospitals. In 1944 she was posted to Ceylon to nurse servicemen injured in the Far East campaign, during which time she produced a body of work, mainly watercolours and drawings of places and the people she met.

She took all her work very seriously and eventually admitted:

“It was an exhausting struggle trying to be agood artist and a good nurse, in the end, I gave up being a good nurse (2).”

After the war, Rosemary became a pupil at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in Hadleigh, Suffolk, run by Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines, remaining a close friend of the couple for the rest of her life.

Rosemary became highly accomplished in several aspects of the visual arts; in addition to drawing and easel painting she learnt the techniques of fresco work (Broomfield church, Christ Stilling the Storm) (3) and, perhaps most impressively, the skill of stained-glass design and construction. She established a studio at Walsham-le-Willows (4) where she continued to paint and draw and also design windows for churches in several counties, especially Suffolk and Essex – over forty in number, one of the most important being in the Church of St Paul, Clacton, Essex.

Exhibitions before the war include mixed shows in the company of contemporary artists such as Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and John Piper and later at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibitions, (5) and the New English Art Club. Cedric Morris always encouraged his students to show with Colchester Art Society which Rosemary did on at least one occasion and she was given a memorial show at the Minories in 1972, organised by Michael Chase and Valerie Thornton (q.v). A body of Rosemary’s work is held by Chelmsford Museum and also by the Imperial War Museum. Also, the Rutherford Project, Broomfield Church.

Statement

Polyanthi

This oil painting is probably typical of Rosemary’s work before the Second World War, the kind of style and technique that would have been ideal for exhibition puposes and was in fact the first picture by her to be accepted by the New English Art Club. Rosemary continued to paint flowers throughout her career with her technique becoming freer and more colourful, especially after she became a regular visitor to Benton End (q.v.).

Mrs Gladwin

Mrs Gladwin was the housekeeper at Broomfield rectory while the Reverend Rutherford was vicar of the parish. Rosemary’s working ethic was to portray people in their every-day settings, hence the powerful image of a working woman in her cleaner’s housecoat, duster in hand, sitting down between her daily chores.

(1) The Listeners, see Sim Fine Art.

(2) Horton, G. (1996). No Nightingale Sang. Volturner Press: Hythe. Geraldine was a Red Cross nurse who worked    alongside Rosemary during the war.

(3) See the Project Rutherford, Broomfield Church.

(4) Rosemary’s brother John was vicar at Walsham-le-Willows.

(5) Royal Academy Summer Show 1937, cat No 715, oil painting, In the Larder.