Olive Juliet Cockerell
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Olive Juliet Cockerell (1868-1910) was an English artist and illustrator trained in the Arts and Crafts school.[1] She and her partner later became early pioneers of "French gardening" in the UK.[2][3]
Cockerell was born in Dulwich, London on 13 September 1868, the daughter of Sydney John Cockerell (1842–1877) and Alice Elizabeth (née Bennett).[4] Her brothers were Sydney Carlyle Cockerell who became director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Theodore Dru Alison Cockerell,[5][6][1] the entomologist who settled in the United States, and the bookbinder Douglas Bennett Cockerell.[7] Their maternal grandfather, John Bennett, was described by members of the Cockerell family as 'abominable' and 'something of a monster'.[8]
Arts and crafts
Cockerell studied at Chiswick School of Art in the late 1880s.[9] She became an artist[10] and illustrator and her drawings earned the admiration of John Ruskin.[11](p160) Ruskin kept her letters[12] and she visited him at Brantwood, his lake district home, early in 1888.[13] She illustrated children's books authored by A. M. W. Stirling[14] and by Mary De Morgan (a close family friend of William Morris)[15]
Cockerell's brother, Sydney, had worked with William Morris from 1892 as his private secretary, was secretary to Morris' Kelmscott Press and, after Morris died in 1896, he was an executor.[5] This led to Olive visiting Kelmscott in 1901, the home of William Morris and where his wife Jane Morris still spent much of her time. A close and enduring friendship developed between the two women who shared various traits and interests including that for gardening,[11](p160) Jane Morris wrote that Olive had "promised to come for a long stay in Spring" (of 1902).[13](p69)
