Ruth DAVENPORT
At the 1924 Show Day at St Ives, this painter showed Early Summer in the Woods (an oil), and also exhibited some 'most interesting' needlework pictures, which reminded the reviewer of Mrs DELANY's paper reproduction of flowers (now carefully preserved in the British Museum): 'Miss Davenport shows some exquisite needlework designed by herself, and is experimenting in lacquer and papier-mache work.'
In the Christmas Show of 1926, she is listed as exhibiting Crafts at Newlyn.
As late as 1937, she held a joint show of imaginative works in St Ives with the painter Enraght MOONY. In his Social History of St Ives (2009) Tovey recounts some anecdotes about Davenport and her behaviour in relation to her tenancy of one and then two of the studios at Piazza, which lead one to conclude that she must have been mentally unstable. Both John PARK and Herbert TRUMAN had reason to complain bitterly of her antisocial behaviour, as did the fishermen in the netlofts on site. Eventually in 1939 she was evicted from both No 6 and No 7. (Tovey, pp161-4)
media
Painter in oils and watercolours; craftworker; art needlework
works and access
Works include: Early Summer in the Woods and needlework pictures
exhibitions
Lanhams Gallery February 1919
St Ives Show Day (Art needlework exhibition) 1924;
NAG December 1924, December 1926 (Craft section)
St Ives 1937 (Joint show of work with Enraght Moony RBA)
references
Cornishman 8 Dec 1926
St Ives Times 21 Mar 1924
Hardie (1995) 100 Years in Newlyn: Diary of a Gallery
Hardie (2009) Artists in Newlyn and West Cornwall
Tovey (2000) GF Bradshaw & STISA (Appendix 3: Principal Members of STISA 1927-1960 p235) (under entry for Moony);
Tovey (2009) St Ives: Social History