Florence Edith Cheesman (1877–1964) was a British artist and author, noted for her watercolours of Arabian birdlife and for producing a series of Iraqi postage stamps and postcards featuring wildlife.
Life and career
Florence Edith Cheesman was born in 1877 at Wistwal in Kent.[1] She was one of the five children of Florence Maud Tassell (d. 1944) and Robert Cheesman (d. 1915), a gentleman farmer of modest means. She and her siblings received their early education from a governess. Later, Edith and her sister, Evelyn Cheesman, attended a school in Brighton run by the Misses Collingwood. There, they acquired a grounding in French and German. Both sisters became governesses, Edith in Surrey and Evelyn in the Midlands.[2] Her sister, Evelyn Cheesman was a noted entomologist and prolific author.
Her brother was Colonel Robert Ernest Cheesman, a British a military officer, explorer, author and ornithologist.[3] The British entomologist and traveller Evelyn Cheesman was her younger sister. She spent considerable time abroad, accompanying her brother on his various missions. In the early 1920s, her brother served as the Private Secretary to Sir Percy Cox during his term as the High Commissioner of Iraq. There Edith became acquainted with Gertrude Bell and began painting portraits and scenes of Iraqi life, including a portrait of King Faisal I (1921), Gertrude Bell’s house in Baghdad (1921) and Hassan Sagarr (or Hassan of the Hawks (1921) as well as streetscapes and other works.
Following the British occupation of Iraq, the English showed a great deal of interest in learning more about the land. Cheesman’s paintings and sketches of Mesopotamia became very popular, were exhibited in a number of London galleries and were the subject of a number of very positive reviews.[4] In 1922, P.G. Konody, writing in the Daily Mail, expressed the hope that Cheesman’s “picturesque views of Mesopotamia” would not be used as propaganda to support Britain’s continued occupation of the land.[5] In 1923, she published her impressions of Mesopotamia in a book simply titled, Mesopotamia (Iraq) in Water Colours.[6]
She visited South Africa in about 1918, and returned there, living the latter part of her life in Natal in the Valley of a Thousand Hills, near Botha's Hill. In 1924, she was commissioned by the Gold Coast Government to produce a series of watercolours for the Empire Exhibition at Wembley. These were published as Tuck's 'Oilette' Postcards of the Gold Coast.[7]
During her time in South Africa, she maintained diaries of her travels. She may have intended to publish these. A manuscript entitled Roaming round Rhodesia with a paint-box: off the beaten track, well-illustrated with original sketches and paintings, and many photographs, is now part of the Campbell Collections at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.[8]
10 rupee definitive Iraq postage stamp designed by Cheesman and issued in 1923
With Marjorie Maynard, Cheesman was the designer of the first postage stamps issued by Iraq (then known as the Kingdom of Iraq under British Administration, as established in 1921), depicting historic Iraqi art and architecture.[10][11] The stamps were not issued until 1923.[10] The definitive stamps were denominated in the currency of the Administration, the Indian anna and rupee,[10] and Cheesman designed the 0.5A, 1A, 4A, 6A, 8A, 2R, 5R and 10R values.[12] They were inscribed "IRAQ" and "POSTAGE & REVENUE" in English and Arabic.[10] Most remained on sale until the introduction of a new set on 17 February 1931, and were used postally after that.[10][13]
Legacy
Her brother, a keen amateur ornithologist, named a sub-species of bird in honour of his sister, Edith Cheesman.[14]
Exhibitions
Jul‒Aug 8, 1908 The London Salon of the Allied Artists' Association. 1st year London Royal Albert Hall
^Benezit Dictionary of British Graphic Artists and Illustrators, Volume 1, Oxford University Press, p. 230
^“Lucy Evelyn Cheesman (1881–1969): Traveller, writer, scientist,” in Hugh Laracy, Watriama and Co: Further Pacific Islands Portraits, Australian National University Press, pp 187-205
^Buck, T., “The Imagining of Mesopotamia/Iraq in the Aftermath of the Great War,” in: Walsh, M.K.J. and Varnava, A., (eds), The Great War and the British Empire: Culture and Society, Taylor & Francis, 2016, pp 151- 162
^Walsh, M.K.J. and Varnava, A., (eds), The Great War and the British Empire: Culture and Society, Taylor & Francis, 2016, p. 162
