Biography
Grace Oscroft (b. Bow, London 17 July 1903 -d. Hackney, London 28 May 1970) whose father ran an ironmonger’s shop at 212 Bow Road, London seems as if her shared interest in art with her elder brother, John Oscroft, drew her to attend the evening classes that John Cooper (1894-1943) taught at the Bow and Bromley Evening Institute. Cooper would not go on to exhibit with the Group but Oscroft's artistic exhibiting career began with the East London Art Club exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery between 8 December – 22 December 1928 where she showed five pictures. Her painting of Garden in Bow was exhibited at the small Group show at the National Gallery, Millbank (now Tate Britain) in the spring of 1929 where it was acquired for the Wakefield Art Gallery (now The Hepworth Wakefield).
Oscroft showed two pieces at the first East London Group exhibition at Alex. Reid and Lefevre and she continued to contribute work annually up until 1935 but she was not represented in the last ELG show in 1936. Her work often seems to have focused on her immediate surroundings in Bow with various roof-top based pictures as well as industrial scenes such as the Iron Foundry, Bow and Bryant and May Factory, Bow or views of Bow Road. It is also obvious from the catalogue record that Grace painted whilst on holiday: in 1931 she exhibited Canal, Northampton and in her last excursion with the Group in 1935 she showed Welsh Hills and Cae Gwege.
Contemporary press reports of the day seemed to state that Grace worked in the family shop selling radio parts and bicycles but, in later life, her brother stated that this was not the case: it seems as if the story of her being a “shop girl” made good copy! She kept house for her parents and then latterly looked after her mother who suffered badly from rheumatism. After her death she found work as a doctor’s housekeeper and then clerical work for various companies: her death certificate recording her occupation as a “warehouse Clerk (retired)".
-Alan Waltham (2024)