Alice Groom of Doulton & Co. at the Glasgow Exhibition, 1888

Alice Groom of Doulton & Co. at the Glasgow Exhibition, 1888

Glass and Ceramics

In this portrait by Sir John Lavery, titled ‘Woman Painting a Pot’, we see Alice Groom, ceramics artist, sat in the demonstration stand of Doulton & Co. at the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1888. She is working at a bench, painting or incising a large jardiniere, with pots in various states of completion displayed in the background and wearing a tightly-corseted blue-grey ‘New Woman’ styled dress with gold bangles and rings. Though the craft she is demonstrating was typical of her everyday employment the fashionable clothing and jewellery was not.

According to a Scotsman newspaper report, the Doulton & Co. exhibition stand at the Glasgow Exhibition was notable for the large numbers of craftsmen and women that were there to demonstrate the different elements of decorative pottery making, all housed in an elaborate Indian-themed pavilion. There were up to twenty men engaged in throwing, turning and molding and several women, including Alice Groom, doing the painting and carved design work to ‘supply the artistic decoration for which Doulton ware is justly celebrated.’ Demonstration stands like this attracted great public interest. ‘The ease and grace with which these pretty artists perform the tasks assigned to them never fail to excite admiration.’

Alice Groom was twenty-four years old when this portrait was painted. In 1881, when listed in the Census, she was described as an ‘artist, painter’ born in Pimlico in London and was living at 3 Auckland Street in Lambeth in a household headed by her widowed mother, a ‘wardrobe dealer’ and two younger brothers, one of them later a tailor. Alice was almost certainly trained at the Lambeth School of Art, which had been founded in 1854 to teach applied art and design to working artisans. The School formed a close relationship with the nearby Doulton & Co. pottery works and from the 1870s had a curriculum designed to train young men and women for the pottery trade. Though there were more famous women associated with the pottery, in particular the sisters Hannah and Florence Barlow, who were also trained at the Lambeth School of Art, pots identified as the work of Alice Groom are occasionally found in antique sales today.

John Lavery (1856-1941), the Belfast-born artist who painted this portrait, was also of an artisan family background and was initially apprenticed as a photographer in Glasgow before becoming an artist. Whilst still a young man he was employed by the municipal committee that organised the Glasgow 1888 exhibition as the ‘official artist’, charged with creating a record in a series of paintings and sketches of the buildings and people that caught his eye and were typical of what became a popular and profitable event. He also painted the grand opening ceremony attended by Queen Victoria. He enjoyed a long and successful career and was knighted in 1918. Alice Groom’s later life is not so well recorded. In 1891 she was no longer living in her mother’s household and had probably married and given up her employment with Doulton & Co.

© By courtesy of Felix Rosentiel's Widow & Son Ltd, London on behalf of the Estate of Sir John Lavery

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum