Biographies

Anne Estelle Rice (1877 – 1959) Born in Conshohocken, near Philadelphia, USA, she tudied art at Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, then took a studio in Paris and was elected societaire of the Salon d’Automne. She had a solo show in 1910 at the Baillie Gallery, London and exhibited there regularly thereafter. In 1911 her work was part of a show by the Women’s International Art Club at the Grafton Galleries, leading Huntley Carter to the following comment in the pages of . In 1911-13 she was associated with the production of John Middleton Murray and Michael Sadler’s magazine , of which John Duncan Fergusson was the art editor. She was also associated with Fergusson himself from 1904 to 1914. And she was friendly with Murray’s wife, Katherine Mansfield. Her portrait of Mansfield is in the collection of The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Rice and Mansfield stayed together at St. Ives, Cornwall in 1918. We have a very poor version of this portait among the images below. The New Age One of the most conspicuous studies is undoubtedly a privileged member of the group. Ann Estelle Rice’s “Egyptian Dancers” is not a picture. It is one of those purely decorative canvases which should be labelled “to be continued” in stained glass windows, or tapestries, or round the frieze, or to be worked out in carpets where the barbs of the early Egyptians could dog the footsteps of domestic joys and sorrows. But the joys would have a bad time. They would object to the colour and would faint in the heat of the ferocity. The fierceness of this canvas, in fact, haunts one. It is impossible to forget it. (NA ) Rhythm