Name Brenda Chamberlain Role Artist | Education Royal Academy of Arts | |
Books Tide-race, The Water-Castle, Poems with Drawings | ||
Brenda Irene Chamberlain (17 March 1912 – 11 July 1971) was a Welsh artist, poet, novelist and memoirist.
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Early life and education
Chamberlain was born in Bangor, Gwynedd, the daughter of Francis Thomas Chamberlain and Elsie Cooil Chamberlain. Her father worked for the railway. Her mother served a term on Bangor Borough Council, and was later Mayor of Bangor during World War II. She studied art at the Royal Academy in London.
Career
Before the Second World War, Chamberlain moved in with the artist John Petts. They married in 1935, but were divorced in 1944. During their time together, they lived in a cottage at Llanllechid and ran the Caseg Press from their home. Chamberlain made woodcuts and broadsheets for the press. The cottage they shared, Tyn-y-mynydd, now bears a plaque commemorating their work there.
Chamberlain also produced prose works, including a novel (The Water Castle, 1964) and a memoir of life at Carreg, Bardsey Island, where she lived and worked from 1947 until 1962.
Chamberlain won the first two Gold Medals awarded by the National Eisteddfod of Wales for Fine Art, in 1951 and 1953.
Later life
In 1961 she went to live on the Greek island of Hydra, but returned to Wales in 1967. She died in 1971, age 59, in Bangor, after an overdose of sedatives. Her remains were interred at Glanadda Cemetery, Ffordd Caernarfon.
There are artworks by Chamberlain in the collections of National Museum Wales, National Library of Wales, Bangor University, Cyfarthfa Castle and Royal Holloway, University of London. There is a collection of her papers, including sketches, letters, poems, photographs, diaries, and unpublished works, in the National Library of Wales.
Kate Holman published an academic biography of Brenda Chamberlain in 1997. Curator Jill Piercy published another biography of Chamberlain in 2013.