Art, RattleBag and Rhubarb, WW1

Women Artists of WW1: Nellie Isaac

20, Dennington Park Road, London NW6 .

There isn’t much to learn about Nellie Elizabeth Isaac online and some of it’s inaccurate. But as always with the string of magic beads that is the internet – there is always something to discover.

Isaac was born in 1886 and grew up in respectable middle-class Hampstead (not West Ham). Her father Percy Lewis Isaac was a naval architect and marine engineer with ship telegraph cable laying patents to his name. He was the son of the Liverpool ship portraitist and lithographer John Raphael Isaac. Her mother – Florence Maud Alexander – came from Clapham.

Nellie had a younger sister Rose Amelia and brother John Robert and in 1901 the family lived at 20 Dennington Park Road in what is now London NW6 with a cook and a housemaid. By the 1911 Census she and her sister were both still living at home and listed as artists. So much for the basic bio.

The Imperial War Museum has six of Isaac’s paintings including this delightful painting of workers watching a theatrical performance:

A Performance in the Canteen Theatre

It shows women munitions workers at Gordon, Watney & Co., Aeronautical Engineers, Weybridge – a large engineering works near Addleston that specialized in the complete strip-down and overhaul of cars and lorries. Their wartime production included aeronautics and munitions and the factory also worked with the Canadian army in refurbishing motor transport vehicles – cars, ambulances, and lorries. 

Watney’s beer ad WW1 era.

Watney – a member of the Watney brewing family – was a car racer who frequently entered events at the nearby Brooklands Race Track. Before the war he was also dealer and rebuilder who specialized in remodeling high-quality motor cars. Before or during World War I Watney turned the skills of his shop towards aero engines. An advertisement from 1917 lists the firm as Aeronautical and General Engineers who were Contractors to His Majesty’s War Office.

Type Z7 Clerget-Blin rotary aero engine.

One of their products was the Type Z7 Clerget-Blin rotary aero engine designed by Pierre Clerget in France in 1911. Clergets were one of the more common engines in use during WW I and were fitted to a number of aircraft including the Avro, Beardmore, and the Sopwith Pup.

Contemporary newspaper accounts report that Gordon Watney built the theater in the works canteen and that he often directed and performed in plays.

Nellie Isaac was a painter, illustrator, designer and inventor. Before the war she exhibited at the Royal Academy and elsewhere.

In 1904 – she had two watercolors “A Florentine” and “La Blonde” at the Royal Academy. In 1906 she won a second prize for “Providence and the Guitar”.

She set up shop with her sister Rose with premises at Eastgate Street in London’s west end.

Here’s the only example of their work that I could find.

The Imperial War Museum came into existence in 1917 and in April of that year Agnes Conway – the daughter of the honorary director Sir Martin Conway – was invited to form a Women’s Work Sub-Committee.

Universal conscription – and the bottomless manpower needs of the war machine – had led to women’s employment in all kinds of laboring and clerical work hitherto the domain of men. They hauled coal, collected bus fares, mended roads, delivered the post, and worked the land. And they worked in factories. Agnes Conway’s committee set out to capture and document this social change.

Nellie Isaac contacted Conway to contribute to the effort. She and Rose Isaac gave up their art and design business and for two years they worked at Gordon, Watney and Co in Weybridge – ” to do something that we felt would be of national importance”.  The committee offered her a guinea per work. Isaac was eventually able to negotiate double that amount which was still – of course – a relative pittance.

Behind The Scenes in the Canteen Theatre. Waiting in the Wings : Gordon, Watney & Co., Aeronautical Engineers, Weybridge  Shows costumed women in the theatre wings looking onto the stage and  waiting to perform. Two men stand to the left, one holding a black cat prop by the tail.

When the armistice came Isaac was there to paint the scene of the announcement 11.11.1918 and the factory celebrations that followed:

Receiving the News of the Armistice, November 11th 1918:
Revels at the Victory Ball Given at the Canteen: Ink and watercolor Interior of a factory canteen at a masque ball. Women in fancy-dress dancing.
Armistice Week in the Canteen. November 12th, 1918: A victory dance organized for women workers. Bunting hangs from the ceiling. A large Union Jack at the far end.

At the start of the war Gordon Watney was appointed by the War Office to form a Mechanical Transport Supply Column within the Army Service Corps (MTASC), Home Counties Division afterwards attached to the 29th Division.  He turned part of his factory into a drill hall and urged men – including his employees – to enlist. He enrolled over 250 men in “Watney’s Lot” aka “Watney Boys” who served as mechanics and drivers. On 7 November 1914, the ‘Watney Boys’ marched to St James’s church, Weybridge, for a farewell sermon before posting to Egypt and Salonika and to the Dardanelles.

After the war, Gordon Watney returned to his race car business and Nellie and Rose Isaac went back to their illustration and design practice in London. In 1934 the London post office directory lists the business of the Misses NE and RA Isaac, as decorative artists at 26 Wells Street, Fitzrovia  – behind Oxford Street in the west end . On one side at 25 they had a turf accountant and an engraver at number 27.

Newspaper accounts in the 1930’s credit her with organizing art exhibitions and with inventing an eggshell veneer.

The sisters lived for a while at Rugby Mansions in Marylebone and then Bramham Gardens, Earls Court where they lived (with their mother until her death in 1938) for the rest of their lives. Percy Lewis had died in 1917. Brother Robert had emigrated to Canada while a teenager. 

Ship manifests show that they travelled first class to Mombasa in 1949 and to Madeira in 1953.

Nelly Isaac died in1955. Her sister Rose in 1959

But before I leave Nellie Isaac I want to return the featured painting. 

A Tug Of War. Girls v Men : Gordon, Watney & Co., Aeronautical Engineers, Weybridge. A team of women in blue work dresses and caps pull on a tug-of-war rope. A young man urges them on, while a young boy and girl watch from behind a barrier. In the background, a crowd watches in front of two marquees.

The local Surrey newspaper reported frequently on events at the factory and they included works sports days and outings. Presumably this painting is of such an occasion.

It’s easy to see this painting as a sly commentary on the struggle for women’s suffrage and equality. The Representation of the People Act of 1918 abolished practically all property qualifications for men and enfranchised women over 30 who met minimum property qualifications. This was in recognition of the contribution made by women’s war work. (Full electoral equality was finally enacted ten years later in 1928.) This tug-of-war between the sexes at the factory is a metaphor for that social change and shift in opportunity and power. WW1 was a total war – everyone was enjoined to “do their bit”. Women’s work was essential and recognition of that helped tilt the playing and working field just a little toward the level.

Photographs from WW1 show that tugs-of war were a familiar wartime pastime.  Here are two where both teams are women.

Women of the Queen Mary’s Auxiliary Army Corps compete in a tug-of-war at the New Zealand Base Depot Sports at Étaples, France, on 3 August 1918
 Royal Air Force Sports Day at Rang du Fliers, 25 August 1918. The winning tug-of-war team of the Red Cross women ambulance drivers which beat the team of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps.

Sources: Beyond the Battlefield: Women Artists of the Two World Wars 2014, Catherine Speck
Imperial War Museum
UK Census 1901, 1911
The British Newspaper Archive

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9 thoughts on “Women Artists of WW1: Nellie Isaac

  1. Dear Josie,

    I’ve just read your fascinating and informative post about Nellie Isaac (and interesting follow up), which I came across while trying to compile a list of artists who drew or painted WAACs during WWI. I’m aware of Beatrice Lithiby’s work but apart from that I don’t know of anyone else who produced a documentary record of their activities.

    I’m an art dealer, specialising particularly in twentieth century war art, and am researching a set of pastels produced by an Anglo-Irish woman called Mary Duncan, which show WAACs involved in sphagnum moss gathering for wound dressings and I wanted to establish some context.

    With best wishes

    Andrew Sim

    1. That’s really interesting Andrew and thanks so much for being in touch. I just looked up Mary Duncan and found a number of her paintings – the harbour at Mousehole and others – but none involving WAACs. When you are ready to share I would love to see those pastels.

      As an aside I was interested to find out discover that diluted garlic juice was added to sterilized sphagnum moss and used as wound dressings during WW1. https://www.josieholford.com/garlic/

      So – you’ve piqued my interest in seeking out more about Mary Duncan and about representations of the work of the WAAC . I’ll let you know if I find anything of interest.

      Thanks again,- Josie

    2. I found these Andrew:
      Dora Meeson
      https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/members-of-the-queen-marys-army-auxiliary-corps-at-work-in-the-cookhouse-royal-air-force-camp-charlton-park-6481
      John Lavery:
      “Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps Cookhouse, Rouxmesnil”
      the Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps Convalescent Home, le Touquet
      https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/the-queen-marys-army-auxiliary-corps-convalescent-home-le-touquet-6521
      A Postcard
      Postcard of disembarkation of Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps at Boulogne, 1918 (c) https://collection.nam.ac.uk/detail.php?acc=1998-01-19-2
      This looks interesting: An Album
      https://www.eclectibles.com/product-p/24020115.htm
      Austin Osman Spare
      William Orpen
      First Chief Controller, Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps (QMAAC) in France, Dame Helen Gwynne-Vaughan, GBE
      Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps- Tending Graves at Wimereux Cemetery –

  2. Hanging on my bedroom wall I have 2 little pastel pictures painted by Nellie Isaac, although I never knew that she was called Nellie. They were always the Misses Isaacs to us. We never met them. My parents bought 7 Bramham Gardens after they died. The house came with all its contents because, as we understood it, the Misses Isaacs’ family were so angry that they hadn’t been left it in the will that they couldn’t be bothered to collect the personal belongings. The house was left to a young man who had been kind to them in their old age, but by the time they died he was living far away. So we children dressed up in their beautiful clothes which filled our dressing up box. I remember a black chintz frock with thick cream lace at the collar and cuffs, Chinese manderin’s robes, a fox fur… There were things that they’d made (dressing table fittings) in an art nouveau style out of egg-shell mosaic glazed with some sort of varnish. There was a wonderful table made of a slice of the mast of a ship that was in some way important – either it sank, or it discovered something, I can’t remember. Now I think of it, they might have made the mirror that I still have – a huge thing, covered in gilded plasterwork ferns & foxgloves. I know it sounds hideous but actually it is rather dramatic. There was so much of their personalities in the house. The drawers were full of their fans and gloves. I wonder whether Nellie designed the flats upstairs? It was a huge house. Upstairs were cunningly designed bedsitters with fitted furniture, very cutting edge for the times. I keep my socks in one of the specially narrow & deep chests of drawers. I am so glad they are not forgotten. As a family we felt the pathos of the remnants of their busy creative lives being forgotten.

    1. What a fascinating story! I am so glad to have these details to add to my knowledge of the Isaac sisters. That house must have been a major contribution to the imaginative richness of childhood. And how lucky to have those pastel pictures. I would love to see a photo of them.

      I looked up the probate record of the sisters. Nellie’s lists an accountant and an auctioneer. Rose’s lists the Westminster Bank. Both are buried at Hoop Lane cemetery, Golders Green, London NW11.

      Perhaps the table from a ship’s mast was crafted by their father who was a marine engineer and architect.

      Thank you for helping to enrich this account with your personal story.

      1. dear Josie
        my nephew has taken a photo with his phone of my 2 little pictures by Nellie Isaac, but I can’t work out how to send them to you

        1. Wow! Thank you! And him. I will send an email so you can send it that way. Thank you so much. Looking forward to seeing them and – with your permission – posting them.

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