Nelly Erichsen

Nelly Erichsen
Born	December 9, 1862(1862-12-09) Newcastle upon Tyne
Died	15 November 1918(1918-11-15) (aged 55) Bagni di Lucca
Resting place	English Cemetery at Bagni di Lucca
Nationality	English
Occupation	Illustrator, painter and writer
Known for	Illustrator of many travel books

Nelly Erichsen (9 December 1862 - 15 November 1918) was an English illustrator and painter. Born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, she was the daughter of a wealthy professional Danish family. After studies at the Royal Academy in the 1880s, she carved out a successful career for herself as an independent, self-supporting illustrator and writer, working with a number of publishing firms including JM Dent and Macmillan, and jointly publishing travel books with Janet Ross, queen bee of the Anglo-Tuscan pre-War community.

Biography

Family history

Nelly Erichsen was born on 9 December 1862 in Newcastle upon Tyne, the fourth of six children. Her father was Herman Gustav Erichsen, born in Copenhagen in October 1826 who, after a ‘commercial education’ and travelling in Europe, came to Newcastle as a young man of just 22. Nelly’s mother Anna was also born in Denmark, one of the wealthy Suhr family, probably around 1825.

In the late 1860s Herman, originally a general trader, invested in the formation of the Great Northern Telegraph Company and became that company’s representative in England until the time of his death, moving his family to live in Tooting, South London. The aim of the firm was to create a worldwide telegraph company, initially by connecting England, Russia and Scandinavia by means of undersea cables. By holding the monopoly on submarine cables connecting Scandinavia with Great Britain to the west and Russia to the east, it managed to build up a telegraph system stretching from Great Britain to Japan, China and the Far East in just a few years.

Herman was a successful and well-respected man of business, with shareholdings in other telegraph businesses and companies in his native Denmark. He died on 6 December 1889 at the age of 63.

Artistic career

In the 1881 Census, Nelly, aged 19, is described as an art student at the Royal Academy, and this led her to a profession which rapidly became a means to her achieving independence and some commercial success. Her first exhibit at the Royal Academy was in 1884: The Deserted Homestead. The following year, 1885, she gave her address as 2, New Court Lincoln’s Inn and had four exhibits at the Royal Academy:

• A descendant of the Danes
• No truly, she is too disdainful
• Briars and Brambles
• A study

Tuition at The Royal Academy was always free and entry was very competitive. Nelly must have shown real talent to have been accepted into such a prestigious organization. She began to be commissioned to produce illustrations for short stories in the English Illustrated Magazine.

By 1891, Nelly was working from, and probably living in, Trafalgar Studios, Manresa Road, Chelsea, later the site of the South-Western Polytechnic, a forerunner of the Chelsea College of Art and Design, which opened its doors in 1895. Her ability to set herself up as an independent and presumably self-supporting may have been assisted, or forced, by the death of her father in 1890 and the break-up of the parental home. In 1893 Nelly exhibited a picture at the Summer Exhibition entitled Phyllis. Nelly’s painting of The Orchard was reviewed in The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. Other paintings (probably oils) from this era include The Magic Crystal, which has obvious Pre-Raphaelite influences.

At this time, Nelly was friends with a Fabian Socialist, Bertha Newcombe, and through her met the predatory writer George Bernard Shaw (GBS). In 1894 Nelly engraved plates for a JM Dent limited edition of the novels of Susan Edmonstone Ferrier (Scottish novelist, 1782–1854). JM Dent, originally a bookbinder from Darlington, had founded his publishing company in London in 1888 and all his initial output consisted of limited editions of classic authors, using handmade paper and high quality bindings and illustrations.

From 1891 to 1897 Nelly was a consistently successful exhibitor at the Royal Academy, and among her works the following were shown:

• The Magic Crystal (1891)
• Out of the deep have I cried unto thee (1892)
• The Emperor’s New Clothes (1897)

By 1900 Nelly can be traced to Italy, illustrating the Lina Duff-Gordon Story of Assisi, published by JM Dent, and in the following year working with Lina’s aunt, the famous writer and hostess Janet Ross, on Florentine Villas.

It was a busy year as 1901 also saw the publication of The Story of Rome, another in the JM Dent series, this time written by Norwood Young, and illustrated by Nelly alone. This series proved very popular - Rome reached its fifth edition in 1905, and Assisi was also published regularly until at least 1909.

In 1903 Nelly worked with Edmund Gardner on The Story of Florence. Five years later she illustrated The Highways and Byways of Derbyshire, written by JB Firth. Nelly gets very prominent billing in this book - her name is embossed on the front cover, alongside and in equal size to that of the author. She is mentioned in the preface: "I am also more particularly indebted to Miss Erichsen not only for the charm of her illustrations but for numerous interesting details relating to persons and places".

September 1909 saw Nelly resident in Chipping Campden, trying to persuade her publisher Mr Dent to advance her moneys. She may have gone there in connection with the community of craftsmen gathering in Chipping Campden under the leadership of CR Ashbee - a well-known Chelsea architect, with some of his best work in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, but he was also a designer of metalwork and jewelry, a poet and writer. He was a founder of the Essex House Press, inspired by Morris’ Kelmscott Press. Chipping Campden was associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement from 1902 when Ashbee moved there with the Guild and School of Handicraft which he had founded in 1888. In particular Nelly may have been drawn through an association with FL Griggs, one of the foremost illustrators and etchers of his day. Griggs was one of the first etchers to be elected to fellowship of the Royal Academy and like Nelly was an illustrator for the Macmillan Highways and Byways Series.

Final years in Italy

From 1912 until November 1918, Nelly was living in the quiet Tuscan spa town of Bagni di Lucca with two companions - Evangeline Whipple, who was the wealthy widow of the American Bishop Henry Whipple, known for his evangelical work among the native Indian population. And Rose Cleveland who was the youngest sister of Grover Cleveland (twice President of the United States) and who had herself served as First Lady in 1885-6 before Cleveland married. Rose and Evangeline had first met in the winter of 1889-90, but finally left America to live together in 1910.

During the years of the first world war and especially after the intervention of the United States, the three women became untiring organisers of aid work for the families of townspeople called to arms, above all after the military disaster at the Battle of Caporetto (now Kobarid, Slovenia) in 1917. A penniless group of refugees were invited to Bagni di Lucca, and Evangeline organized at her own expense a boarding school for the children of these people run by the Stimmatine nuns, which took in around one hundred children.

In 1918 tragedy struck, when both Rose and Nelly were carried off by the 1918 flu pandemic which decimated post-war Europe. Evangeline died in London in 1930, but wanted her body to be laid to rest in Bagni di Lucca next to the tombs of the two friends who had preceded her.

Persondata
Name	Erichsen, Nelly
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	9 December 1862
Place of birth	Newcastle upon Tyne
Date of death	15 November 1918
Place of death	Bagni di Lucca