Biographies

Phillys Vere Campbell We know very little about her. She exhibited at the Doré Gallery in 1909 and the Baillie in 1911. Huntly Carter praised her work in for December 23, 1909 as follows: The New Age () What a splendid, though controlled exuberance, too, leaps out from the series of coloured drawings by Miss Phillys Campbell at the exhibition of the ’09 Club at the Doré Gallery. One feels her work is the outcome of a natural talent ; it is charged with life and sponaneity. Miss Campbell has simply picked up her pencil and put down what she felt, not what is the fashion. She has chosen mostly early Victorian themes — groups of old scandal-mongering maids in stiff Victorian interiors. Her decoration is natural, her colour delightful, her compositions simple and effective. Her expression is the thing ; everything is subordinated to it. Her satire hits you. And her signature-what a thing of joy ! An eighteenth-century brigand, with a dagger dripping with gore, and seeming to say, ‘“Death, I’ll have your b-r-r-lood !” Altogether a gifted and charming Miss Cynicus. NA 6.8:189 And again in April 1910, Carter wrote about her work at the Doré: () There is nothing to add to what I have already said concerning the amazing cleverness of her work. Miss Campbell is a born caricaturist. She revels in ideas. Every line she puts down is an emphatic statement of some human weakness or folly. Every picture tells its own tale; every detail counts. Note the weird Eastern effects, together with the soft indescribable dreamlike expression in “ Opium,” the pure caricature of “The House-Maid,” the biting satire of “What are you doing, Louise?” “Malting the tea, Henrietta.” Louise is doctoring the tea with poison. Note, too, the charming colour, clever composition, and Hogarthian spirit of the “ Fortune Teller.” Clearly work to be seen and applauded. NA 6.24:571 We have found a Study by her in Huntly Carter’s book , 1913. The New Spirit in Drama and Art