Biography
Claughton Pellew (b. Redruth, Cornwall, UK 1890 - d. Norfolk, UK 1966), son of a mining engineer, William Pellew-Harvey, and an artist mother, Elizabeth Hichens, spent his early childhood in Canada and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art (1907-11). Among his contemporaries there were Stanley Spencer, Ben Nicholson and Paul Nash. A visit to Italy after finishing college greatly influenced him and probably led to his decision to become a Roman Catholic. His beliefs meant that he became a conscientious objector during the First World War and was interned at Dartmoor during the latter part of the war. After his marriage to Emma Marie (‘Kechie’) Tennent (1888-1968), a neighbour in Blackheath, who he had encouraged to also study at the Slade (1912-14) in 1919, he moved to a Norfolk where they built their own house. Yet, on several occasions (1923/1929-3) they travelled to Bavaria, staying at Tutzing on the Starnbergerzee where the lakes and trees must have reminded Pellew of his early years in Canada. Although he continued to paint he became best known as a wood engraver, exhibiting with the Society of Wood Engravers (1923; 1930 and 1932). He lived a remote rural life and had few exhibitions; two held after his death were at Norwich in 1967, at the Ashmolean in Oxford in 1987.
