EILEAN PEARCEY was an artist who specialised in action drawings of dancers. Her work can be found in the Australian Museum of the Performing Arts, at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia and in private collections, but the bulk of her output, several thousand drawings and paintings, were at her suggestion gifted to Surrey University. She admired greatly what they had done for dance and they returned the compliment by awarding her an honorary MA.
She was born in Melbourne 28 May 1901, and moved to London in 1931, and was an Australian artist long resident in London. She died there in 1999, aged 97. From the 1930s she specialised in drawing theatrical scenes. After graduating BA from Melbourne University, she studied art at the NGV under Bernard Hall then in England and Paris, which she visited with Constance Stokes . She was a close friend of Sheila Hawkins (Mrs Bowden), another Australian expatriate resident in London. During WWII Pearcey was reportedly engaged by the Admiralty to write up a secret history of the war. She was awarded an Honorary MA from Surrey University, where a collection of her dance drawings are on permanent exhibition.
Her marriage to the distinguished structural engineer A. Ramsay Moon broke up and they were divorced shortly after the Second World War. But the central tragedy of her life was the death through meningitis of her only son, Felix, at the age of 13. He was a brilliant child, and his loss was something she felt every day of her life.
For a more complete biography see
“Obituary: Eilean Pearcey:” [FINAL Edition] Drummond, John. The Independent; London (UK) [London (UK)] 19 Feb 1999: 7.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1999
- Last updated:
- 2019
