Cicely Mary Barker facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Cicely Mary Barker
Barker in her teens
Born	Cicely Mary Barker 28 June 1895 Croydon, Surrey, England
Died	16 February 1973(1973-02-16) (aged 77) Worthing Hospital, Worthing, England
Resting place	Ashes spread in the churchyard at Storrington, Sussex, England
Education	Correspondence art courses Croydon School of Art
Occupation	Author, illustrator, artist
Years active	1911–1962
Employer	Various publishers but chiefly Blackie and Son Limited Commissions from various British dioceses
Known for	Illustrations of fairies and flowers Triptychs and other works for the Anglican church
Notable work	The Flower Fairies of the Spring (1923) and other Flower Fairy books The Feeding of the Five Thousand The Parable of the Great Supper Out of Great Tribulation and other Christian-themed works in various British churches and chapels
Parent(s)	Walter Barker and Mary Eleanor (Oswald) Barker
Relatives	Dorothy Oswald Barker (sister)
Signature

Cicely Mary Barker (born June 28, 1895 – died February 16, 1973) was a talented English artist. She is most famous for her amazing fantasy drawings of fairies and flowers. Her art journey started when she was a young girl, taking art classes by mail and at the Croydon School of Art.

Cicely's first professional drawings were for greeting cards and kids' magazines. Her very first book, Flower Fairies of the Spring, came out in 1923. Many more similar books followed in the years after that.

Cicely was a very religious person, following the Anglican faith. She often gave her artwork to help raise money for Christian charities. She also created some Christian-themed books, like The Children’s Book of Hymns. She even worked with her sister Dorothy on a book called He Leadeth Me. Cicely designed a beautiful stained glass window for St. Edmund's Church. Her painting of the Christ Child, The Darling of the World Has Come, was even bought by Queen Mary herself!

Cicely was skilled in many art styles, including watercolor, pen and ink, oils, and pastels. Artists like Kate Greenaway and the Pre-Raphaelites greatly influenced her work. She believed in painting from her heart, without following strict art rules. Cicely Mary Barker passed away in 1973. Even though she published Flower Fairy books for spring, summer, and autumn during her life, a winter collection was put together from her leftover work and published after she died in 1985.

Cicely's Life Story

Her Early Years

Cicely Mary Barker was born on June 28, 1895, in Croydon, Surrey, England. She was the second daughter and youngest child of Walter Barker, who worked in a seed company and loved art, and his wife Mary Eleanor.

As a child, Cicely faced some health challenges. Her parents and later her older sister, Dorothy, took great care of her at home. Her family was quite well-off. They had a nanny, a governess, and a cook to help out. Cicely spent a lot of time in bed, enjoying painting books and reading from her nursery library. She especially loved the works of Kate Greenaway and Randolph Caldecott, who later inspired her own art.

Her Art Education and First Jobs

Cicely took art classes by mail until about 1919. In 1908, when she was 13, she started evening classes at the Croydon School of Art. She continued going there into the 1940s and even became a teacher there later on.

In 1911, a company called Raphael Tuck & Sons bought four of Cicely's small drawings. They paid her half a sovereign, which was a good amount of money then. These drawings were then printed as postcards. In October 1911, she won second prize in a poster competition. Soon after, she became the youngest member of the Croydon Art Society. An art critic from the Croydon Advertiser newspaper said her drawings showed "remarkable freedom of spirit" and that she had "distinct promise."

After her father passed away in June 1912, Cicely was 17 years old. She started sending her art and poems to magazines like My Magazine and Child’s Own to help support her mother and sister. Her sister Dorothy also helped by teaching kindergarten at home, bringing in some money for the family.

The Flower Fairies of the Spring Book

Fairies became very popular in books and art in the early 1900s. This was after famous works like The Coming of the Fairies by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie came out. Even Queen Mary helped make fairies popular by sending fairy postcards to her friends. In 1918, Cicely created her own postcard series featuring elves and fairies.

In 1923, Cicely sent her flower fairy paintings to different publishers. A company called Blackie bought 24 paintings with poems for £25. However, she didn't start earning royalties (a percentage of sales) until her book Flower Fairies of the Summer was published in 1925. People loved her work. One writer, Mary Violet Clayton Calthrop, said in 1925 that Cicely had "exquisite taste, besides draughtsmanship."

Life at The Waldrons

In 1924, Cicely's family moved to a large Victorian house at 23 The Waldrons. Cicely had a special art studio built in the garden. Her sister Dorothy ran a kindergarten in a room at the back of the house. The family lived simply and attended churches for less privileged people. Cicely sometimes included faces of people from her church in her religious paintings. She was known as one of the main supporters of St. Andrew's Church.

The children from the kindergarten often posed for the Flower Fairies until the school closed in 1940. Cicely once said, "My sister ran a kindergarten and I used to borrow her students for models. For many years I had an atmosphere of children about me – I never forgot it." She also painted children of her relatives and their young housekeeper, Gladys Tidy, who posed for the Primrose Fairy.

Cicely painted the plants from real life. If she couldn't find a plant, staff at Kew Gardens would help her get specimens. She even designed and made the Flower Fairy costumes herself! Each costume was based on the flowers and leaves of the plant she was illustrating. She kept the costumes in a trunk, along with wings made from twigs and gauze. After a drawing was finished, she would take the costume apart and reuse the pieces for other designs.

Her Middle Years

In the late 1920s, Cicely wondered if she should only focus on religious art. But her family and friends encouraged her to keep creating both secular (non-religious) and sacred (religious) works, which she did.

Cicely continued attending evening art classes at the Croydon Art School. She also went on sketching trips to places like Amberley and Storrington in Sussex, and to Cornwall. She visited other artists and family members during these trips.

In 1940, the Barkers' live-in maid retired. Dorothy Barker also closed her kindergarten. Dorothy then took care of the household and looked after her mother and sister. Dorothy and Cicely worked together on two books: Our Darling's First Book and the Christian book, He Leadeth Me. Sadly, Dorothy passed away from a heart attack in 1954. After her sister's death, Cicely found it hard to focus on her art because she had to care for her elderly mother. However, she did manage to start planning a stained glass window design for St. Edmund's, Pitlake, in memory of her sister.

Later Life and Passing

Cicely's mother died in 1960. In 1961, Cicely moved to a new house in Croydon. She also fixed up a small apartment called a maisonette in Storrington, Sussex, which a friend had left to her. She named it St. Andrew's. After moving there, her health started to decline. She spent time in nursing homes and was cared for by relatives and friends.

Cicely Mary Barker passed away at Worthing Hospital on February 16, 1973, at 77 years old. Two funeral services were held for her. Her ashes were scattered in the churchyard at Storrington. In 1989, Frederick Warne, the company that published her Flower Fairies books, was bought by Penguin Books.

Cicely's Art Style

Cicely mainly used watercolor with pen-and-ink for her art. But she was also very good at black-and-white drawings, oil paintings, and pastels. She always carried a sketchbook to draw interesting children she saw. She once said, "I have always tried to paint instinctively in a way that comes naturally to me, without any real thought or attention to artistic theories." This means she painted from her heart.

Kate Greenaway was one of Cicely's favorite artists when she was a child, and she influenced Cicely's art. Cicely's child characters often wear old-fashioned clothes, similar to Greenaway's. However, Cicely's children look more lively and less flat, partly because printing technology had improved. Cicely studied flowers very closely and was friends with another children's illustrator, Margaret Tarrant. Besides Greenaway, the artist Alice B. Woodward also inspired Cicely's work.

The Pre-Raphaelites were a big influence on Cicely throughout her life. She once mentioned, "I am to some extent influenced by them—not in any technical sense, but in the choice of subject matter and the feeling and atmosphere they could achieve." She especially liked the early paintings of John Everett Millais and the "wonderful things" by Edward Burne-Jones.

Drawings of Children

Cicely often gave her sketches and paintings of children to friends or the children's parents. She also donated them to charities and church events, or showed them in art exhibitions. She drew covers for magazines and books, and created postcard series for publishers. Some of these series included Picturesque Children of the Allies (1915) and Shakespeare's Boy and Girl Characters (1917, 1920).

Her own books, Old Rhymes for All Times (1928) and The Lord of the Rushie River (1938), were well-liked. The Lord of the Rushie River tells the story of a girl who lives among swans. Another book, Groundsel and Necklaces (1943), is about a girl named Jenny who helps her family escape poverty with the help of fairies. This story has a character similar to a Dickensian character, showing a concern for social issues. A sequel to Rushie River called Simon the Swan was planned in 1943 but only published after her death in 1988.

Christian-Themed Art

Cicely was a devoted Christian and created religious art throughout her life. She published postcards and guardian angel birthday cards for Christian organizations. She also designed Christmas cards for The Girls' Friendly Society for over 20 years. One of her original designs, The Darling of the World Has Come, was bought by Queen Mary for £5.5.0 in 1926.

Her religious books include The Children's Book of Hymns (1929) and He Leadeth Me (1933), which she wrote with her sister. Some of her major religious artworks include large oil paintings called triptychs. These include The Feeding of the Five Thousand (1929) for a chapel in Wales, and The Parable of the Great Supper (1934) for St. George's Chapel. The Feeding painting has unfortunately disappeared, and only an old black-and-white photo of it exists.

In 1941, she completed oil panels about the seven sacraments for the baptismal font at St. Andrew's Church. She also designed baptismal rolls for the church wall. In 1946, she finished a large oil painting called Out of Great Tribulation for a church chapel. After her sister died in 1954, Cicely began designing a stained glass window in her memory. This window, showing Christ preparing to wash his disciples' feet, was her last religious artwork and was installed in 1962.

Cicely's Published Works

Cards

• Picturesque Children of the Allies; J. Salmon, 1916
• National Mission; Society for the Preservation of Christian Knowledge, 1916
• Shakespeare's Boy Characters; C. W. Faulkner, 1917
• Shakespeare's Girl Characters; C. W. Faulkner, 1920
• Seaside Holiday; J. Salmon, 1918, 1921
• Elves and Fairies; S. Harvey, 1918
• Guardian Angel; Society for the Preservation of Christian Knowledge, 1923
• Christmas cards; Girls' Friendly Society, 1920s, 1930s
• Christmas cards (US); Barton-Colton, 1920s, 1930s
• Beautiful Bible Pictures; Blackie, 1932

Books

• Flower Fairies of the Spring; Blackie, 1923
• Spring Songs with Music; Blackie, 1923
• Flower Fairies of the Summer; Blackie, 1925
• Child Thoughts in Picture and Verse (by M. K. Westcott); Blackie, 1925
• Flower Fairies of the Autumn; Blackie, 1926
• Summer Songs with Music; Blackie, 1926
• The Book of the Flower Fairies; Blackie, 1927
• Autumn Songs with Music; Blackie, 1927
• Old Rhymes for All Times; Blackie, 1928
• The Children’s Book of Hymns; Blackie, 1929; rep. 1933
• Our Darling’s First Book (written in collaboration with Dorothy Barker); Blackie, 1929
• Flower Fairies of the Seasons; Blackie, 1930
• The Little Picture Hymn Book; Blackie, 1933
• Rhymes New and Old; Blackie, 1933
• A Flower Fairy Alphabet; Blackie, 1934
• A Little Book of Old Rhymes; Blackie, 1936
• He Leadeth Me (written in collaboration with Dorothy Barker); Blackie, 1936
• A Little Book of Rhymes New and Old; Blackie, 1937
• The Lord of the Rushie River; Blackie, 1938
• Flower Fairies of the Trees; Blackie, 1940
• When Spring Came In at the Window; Blackie, 1942
• A Child’s Garden of Verses (Robert Louis Stevenson); Blackie, 1944
• Flower Fairies of the Garden; Blackie, 1944
• Groundsel and Necklaces; Blackie, 1946; reprinted as Fairy Necklaces
• Flower Fairies of the Wayside; Blackie, 1948
• Flower Fairies of the Flowers and Trees; Blackie, 1950
• Lively Stories; Macmillan, 1954
• The Flower Fairy Picture Book; Blackie, 1955
• Lively Numbers; Macmillan, 1957
• Lively Words; Macmillan, 1961.
• The Sand, the Sea and the Sun; Gibson, 1970

Books Published After Her Death

• Flower Fairies of the Winter; Blackie, 1985
• Simon the Swan; Blackie, 1988
• A Little Book of Prayers and Hymns; Frederick Warne, 1994
• A Flower Fairies Treasury; Frederick Warne, 1997
• Fairyopolis; Frederick Warne, 2005
• Wild Cherry Makes A Wish; (collaboration with Pippa Le Quesne) Frederick Warne, 2006
• How to find Flower Fairies; Frederick Warne, 2007
• Return to Fairyopolis; Frederick Warne, 2008

Book Covers

• A New Epiphany; Society for the Preservation of Christian Knowledge, 1919
• 43 Annuals; Blackie, 1920s, 1930s

Religious Works

• St. Cecily's Garden; 1920
• Cradle roll design; St. Edmund's, Pitlake, 1922
• Banner design; St. Mary's, Sanderstead, 1923
• The Feeding of the Five Thousand; reredos triptych, chapel at Penarth, Wales; 1929
• The Parable of the Great Supper; triptych, St. George's chapel, Waddon
• The Seven Sacraments; baptismal font panels, St. Andrew's, Croydon
• St. John the Baptist; central banner panel, Abesford church, 1943
• Lettering, sword, and shield; mount for a list of men and woman serving in the Forces, St. Andrews, Croydon, 1943
• Baptismal rolls; St. Andrews, Croydon, 1948, 1962
• The font in St Andrew's Church, South Croydon
• Out of Great Tribulation; memorial chapel, Norbury Methodist church, 1948
• I Am Among You As He That Serveth; stained glass window design, St. Edmund's, Pitlake, 1962

Images for kids

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  Detail of memorial to Cicely Mary Barker at Park Hill, Croydon