Last week, Rye News reported the death of Joan de Bethel. We featured an illustration of one of her many cat figurines, for which she is famous.
Now, Dr Fanny Baldwin, a trustee of the Rye Art Gallery (RAG), has been able to source two of her art-works, and writes: “Her work is mixed media, very dream-like, fantastical, theatrical and includes Victorian paper cut-outs. It is her painting that does better justice to her imaginative vision; she had a wonderful imagination.”
One painting, entitled End of the Day, is collage and acrylic on board and was donated to RAG Permanent Collection by Sally Westoby in 2013. The gallery has another collage and acrylic by this artist called The House Inside and Out but no photo is available at the moment. Her theatrical skill which emerges in this work is apparent also in the inset image of a poster mentioning her as a theatre designer. It advertises a Lyric Theatre Hammersmith production of the play Ring for Catty by Patrick Cargill, actor and playwright.
John Kitcher, who knew Joan for many years, writes: “Many will recall Joan’s small paintings of everyday scenes, perhaps of tea rooms or of dogs being walked, always alive and observant. But the mixed-media work was more theatrical and went into a stranger imaginary world.”
Photos: Rye Art Gallery