Stella Mary Newton, nee Pearce.
Stella Mary Pearce was
born on April 17th 1901, 1 think in London but her parents moved to Manchester
soon after. Her father owned a bookshop in Market Street where Manchester’s
leftwing intellectuals used to meet and local Journalists. Her Mother,
Georgiana Pearce, wrote for the Daily Herald, (?) as well as being a well-known
concert pianist. She also used to accompany silent film on the piano. She was
born a Hoby and was descended from the Hoby,s who once wins descended from the
Hoby’s who once lived in Bisham Abbey in Berkshire. Stella attended Withington
Girls’ School until, when she was in her teens, her mother returned to
London taking Stella with her.
Stella began her stage career in Frank Benson’s
Shakespearian Company. She then went on to theatre design, one of her first assignments
being to work, as an assistant, in the legendry Othello in which Paul Robeson
and Peggy Ashcroft starred. Later she designed the sets and costumes for T. S.
Eliot’s “The Rock” at Sadler’s Wells,
in 1934, followed by the first production of his “Murder in the Cathedral” in
Canterbury Cathedral in 1935 (and later in London). T. S. Eliot’s “Family Reunion”
for two weeks before war broke out but was revived, at the Mercury Theatre in
1947. During this time she also opened
her own Dress Shop (Boutique) in Bond Street, designing the clothes thast she
sold there. This knowledge of how clothes are actually made was of great use to
her when she came to study the history of costume.
During The
war she, and Eric Newton (the art critic and member of the Brains Trust whom she
had married earlier) were both directed into extra mural lecturing. This involved
much traveling, in difficult conditions, but gave her the opportunity of studying
the dress of the Italian Renaissance whilst waiting for trains.
After the
war she worked, from 1952-61 at the National Gallery as an adviser on costume
in paintings to the in art historians there who were cataloging the various European
Schools. She also contributed an influential appendix to Eric Newton’s “ Tintoretto”
which caused some paintings to be re dated.
In 1965
she was instrumental in founding the Department for the Study of the History of
Press at the Courtauld1 Institute of Art and became the first head
of the department. Many of her students have since gone on to have distinguished
careers of their own. In 1987 the students and the Costume Society dedicated a
festschrift to Stella with an appreciation by Roy Strong at the front who wrote,
“The establishment of the history of dress as a serious academic discipline
owes an incalculable debt to Stella Mary Newton”
A list of
Stella’s publications is attached, she has lectured widely in both Europe and
America and was awarded, the OBE in 1976 and made a Fellow of the Royal Society
of Arts in 1987 (88?)
2001
Miss Elizabeth O’Kelly
M.B.E.
After Stella left Withington
Girl’s School, but was still living in Manchester, she used to help at the Madge
Atkinson’s Dance Academy, in Rusholme, Manchester. She appeared in ‘The
Constant Nymph” playing Teresa Sanger. Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft were
the stars She was a member of the Unnamed Society, the leading amateur dramatic
group in Manchester, of which Sladen Smith was the director. I think it was there
that she met Eric. Joan Littlewood was also a member and also playing at the Manchester
repertory, but I think by then Stella was in London.
Eric Newton was born in 1893 but changed his name from Oppenheimer
to Newton, his mothers maiden name. His family owned a factory making mosaics
and Eric himself designed mosaics for several churches but when he became a writer
and the art critic for the Guardian. He married Stella in 1934. Stella was his
second wife but remained on very good terms with his first wife. Eric had two
sons by his first marrage, Ian who lived in Mayfield and another who lived out
in Capetown. There was also a grand child out in Canada called Jo. He died in.
1965, when sitting at his desk in the Guardian Offices.
During the war Eric and Stella were employed as lecturers
to the forces. I first met her in 1948 when she came as a tutor on stage design
to a Drama School at Whitby that
I was organising for the
Yorkshire Rural Community Council (before I joined the Colonial Service)
Angus Ackworth, founder of the Leach Trust funded the setting
up of the Department for the History and Study of dress. The chief executor
of the Trust, Barbara Gardiner did a great deal for Stella. (She was known in
those days as Barbara Whatmore.)
Stella also had a lot to
do with Karen Finch, who set up the Hampton Court Textile Conservation Centre
She had contacts in Hungary
(1977), Sweden, Estonia (1979) and Romania (1973). She had many visits to Italy
and the U.S.A.
The portrait of a Victorian
woman, which used to hang in my room, was of Mrs. Hoby, her grandmother, who lived
in Mecklenburg Square, in Bloomsbury.
19.02.2002