Vera Bax drawings: A revelation

Vera Bax drawings: the recent discovery of thirty-odd sketches and portraits.

In January 2025, a portfolio of Vera Bax sketches in crayon or pastel on various colours of paper was put on sale on eBay and bought by Richard D North (VB’s grandson) and Emma Richeldis North (VB’s great-granddaughter).

These drawings add greatly to what we know of Vera Bax (1889-1974) as an artist. Previously, we had a few VB oil paintings of tantalisingly variable quality. The new works seem to take us to the concerted work of a woman who was concentrating. Was this a function merely of her being older? Or more settled? (She was, arguably, free from three decades of complicated relationships with husbands.) Anyway, her drawings seem more consistently expressive than her oils.

Minka (as she was known to her family and friends) seems to show far more of herself, and of her subjects, than we had previously seen. It is worth bearing in mind, though, her forensic eye, shown in her 1933 Royal Academy of Music portrait of her brother-in-law, the composer Arnold Bax.  It is revealed by Claire Colebourn FRCP to be a diagnostically accurate account of his heart condition.

I am very struck by my feeling that Minka’s nudes are as much about faces as figures.

Especially in the case of her female nudes, we know nothing of the women portrayed and can presume nothing of their personalities. Yet, they seem to be accounts of real people. From the distance of my post-Boomer world, they seem characterful. I don’t mean they are obviously staunch or stalwart. Far from it, some seem wistful or even disquieted.

The little portrait of Lillian Rawnsley, Mother in bed, sewing from 1910, signed as being by Vera Rawnsley, may be the earliest Vera Bax work we have. I imagine it dates from the period when she was being courted by Stanley North, my grandfather, whom she married in 1911. I also imagine they met in the South Kensington premises of what had become the Royal College of Art, where she was probably studying as a fee-paying fine artist and he may well have been a student of the wide design and craft programme of the time, perhaps sponsored by his parents’ local council.

A selection of VB’s drawings

Some portraits

Some nudes

Some details
Firstly, we have no starting or end date for the period the drawings cover. Only a few of the works have dates and/or signatures and/or subject names. Apart from the 1910 drawing, 1939 is the earliest of the dated works, and 1949 the latest.

Secondly, secondary evidence suggests that someone, probably (or perhaps) VB herself, selected these works as worth preserving in a portfolio. Faded broadsheet newspaper interleavings of the drawings suggest that the mid-1960s might be the last time the collator put things together. The portfolio has a sticker in VB’s characteristic handwriting with her long-term address as a single woman: Studio B, Number 11, Edith Grove, Chelsea, SW10, where as a teenager I often visited her with my parents , before going out to supper in an affordable white table-cloth Greek restaurant, The Salamis on Fulham Road.