Felicity: Art, War and Peace

A biography of Felicity Blackett (1912-2011), an English artist, supplemented by her own diaries, begins with her birth in Liverpool where her Scottish mother married a detective who became head of the Criminal Investigation Department. At the age of four, she was saddened by her father's death in the Battle of the Somme in 1916. After the war, Felicity and her mother immigrated to Italy where she had art lessons from Barbara Nash, sister of the well-known war artist brothers. Returning to England just before the war, ventures included marriage, motherhood, divorce, and a second marriage, all while working in the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD), caring for wounded soldiers, including her second husband. After World War II, Felicity began with consolidating her artistic talents over twenty-five years in South Africa and then four decades in England where she settled in the Cotswold Village of Dursley, staying in close touch with her extended family and friends including her American daughter and family. While in England her art was influenced by the surrounding countryside, villages, and animals especially wildfowl and scenic habitats in Gloucestershire and on visits to the Scottish border country.