Biographies

Mary McCrossan (1863 – 1934) The information below comes with the coutesy of the David Messums Gallery (London) web page : http://www.messums.com/sub_artists.ink?artistid=87&school=Modern%20British Mary McCrossan arrived at St Ives to study with Julius Olsson in the late 1890’s, when canvasses show her choosing subjects among the coves and harbours of the West Cornwall coast. The daughter of an iron founder, she trained at Liverpool School of Art before progressing on to the Academie Delecluse in Paris, and, although she returned to Liverpool for several years after her first visit to St Ives, by 1910 she was advertising painting lessons at Piazza Studios above Porthmeor beach. As the years passed her love of travel took her away from St Ives for extended periods but her continental watercolours were to comprise several one-man shows at the Baillie and Beaux Arts galleries between 1909-1928. Writing about her painting Snow Peaks, exhibited at the Alpine Club Gallery in 1918, Ezra Pound observed that it was a “simple treatment, and deserves better place than in the crook of the stairs” . (NA 22.26:503)