Constance Ellen Wise was born on 17 June 1882, the daughter of George Jason Wise (1852-1924) and Annie Matilda Wise (née Taylor) (1851-1907) of 11 Portland Place, Marylebone, London, where they ran an upmarket boarding house, or residential chambers, for single people. Following the death of Constance’s mother in 1907 her father remarried in 1908 to Elizabeth Charlotte Bright (1865-1946).
Constance attended the Polytechnic School in Regent Street until the 19th April 1898 when she was admitted to the Frances Mary Buss School for Girls’ (North London Collegiate School), an endowed grammar school offering a good education for girls whose families could not afford the fees of a private school.
It is not know where Constance first studied art, but by 1911 she was working as a miniature portrait painter at the Speaight Photographic Studio in New Bond Street, London, and between 1910 and 1938 she regularly exhibited miniature portraits at the Royal Academy’s annual summer exhibition.
Constance’s exhibits at the Royal Academy summer exhibitions:
1910 – Boy’s head.
1915 – Portrait.
1916 – Mrs E. Caesar.
1917 – Miss O’Connell Finnigan.
1918 – R.N.R.; Captain H. Kennedy Birley; Portrait.
1919 – G.J.W. & E.C.B. [Constance’s father George Jason Wise and step-mother Elizabeth Charlotte Bright].
1920 – Kenneth; M.A. London.
1922 – Mary Diana; Dr V.H. Rutherford.
1923 – Frederick Belton, esq.; Margot; Mrs John Bate.
1924 – Mrs A. Ernest Withy.
1925 – Dr Cicely Weatherall; Marjorie, daughter of Gerald Lawrence, esq.
1926 – Miss Gladys Hoffert Miles, daughter of Rev. J.H. Weatherall; Maryrose, daughter of Elmore Brewerton, esq.
1927 – The Headmaster of Mill Hill School; Jill.
1928 – Claude Montefiore, esq; Mary Diana.
1929 – Caroline & Louise, daughters of Mrs A.N. Arthur.
1930 – Marjorie, daughter of Gerald Lawrence, esq.; Mrs John Brandon.
1931 – Mrs J.H. Weatherall.
1932 – Margarita of Buenos Aires; The Principal of Manchester College, Oxford; Helen [possibly Constance’s friend Helen Macdonell Watson (1880-1964)].
1933 – Daphne; Principal H.J. Weatherall.
1934 – Miss Romantic.
1935 – The Chief Justice of Ceylon, Sir Philip Macdonell; Acorn-hunters.
1937 – Helen; Mrs Cotton; O.S. Macdonell.
1938 – Mrs Eric Eadie; O.S. Macdonell, esq.
From 1915 to 1938 Constance lived at no.45 Waterlow Court in Hampstead Garden Suburb, a communal housing development for professional single women designed by M.H. Baillie Scott. It was probably while living at Waterlow Court that Constance met her life-long companion Helen Macdonell Watson (1880-1964), a teacher, who lived at no. 48 Waterlow Court.
By 1926 Constance was studying at the Hampstead Garden Suburb School of Art and Crafts run by the artist Mr Dudley Heath, where in May 1926 she was one of the students who signed a petition against the proposed closure of the Art School.
In 1939, Constance and Helen moved to Hill House Flat in The Avenue, Sherborne, Dorset, where they lived until Constance’s death, aged 76, on 6 July 1958. In her will Constance left all her monies and property to Helen. That same year Helen donated to the library of Foster’s Grammar School a set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Helen died, aged 84, on 19 March 1964 at Mount Pleasant Nursing Home in Clevedon, Somerset.
For further information see Carmela Arturi and Roger Phillips, Dictionary of Miniature Painters 1870-1970.
I am very grateful to Carmela Arturi and Roger Phillips for generously allowing me to reproduce these images from The Arturi Phillips Collection.
Rachel Hassall