Christabel Annie Cockerell (baptized 21 October 1864–18 March 1951) was a British painter of children, portraits and landscapes. She married the sculptor Sir George Frampton, becoming Lady Frampton, but continued to exhibit her art using her maiden name.
She was born in 1863, daughter of George Russell Cockerell of London, and trained at the Royal Academy Schools from 1882, where she met her far ahead husband, the sculptor George Frampton. They married in April 1893 and their son, Meredith Frampton was born upon 17 March 1894. She exhibited work at the Royal Academy from 1885, and continued until 1910, always under her maiden name.
Her husband was knighted in 1908 and in 1910 they moved to a new home designed by him at 90 Carlton Hill, St John’s Wood, London, which included a studio for each of them. Her studio in the home was described as “a absolute painting room in which comfort and facilitate are happily combined”, with numerous pictures upon the walls, and the carpet from the studio of Leighton. The home was featured in a 1910 article “Recent Designs in Domestic Architecture” in The Studio, complete when photographs, including one of the interior of Cockerell’s studio. The exterior of the home is a propos unchanged today.
Some perspicacity into the household can be gleaned from an flyer in The Times in 1919, in which she seeks a “Cook-General and House-Parlourmaid” for a “comfortable place in St. John’s Wood”, and describes the household as comprising a family of three and three maids.
Cockerell modelled occasionally for her husband: his Mother and Child shows her afterward their infant son Meredith, and was exhibited at the 1897 Venice Biennale and the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900. Her husband then featured in her work: one of her smaller paintings shows him sitting by a window, working upon his sculpture, watched by his teenage son.
Her husband died on 21 May 1928, and in 1930 she presented several bronzes to Camberwell Borough Council’s art gallery in his memory, because of his affection for Camberwell.
Paintings by Cockerell include:
Media united to Christabel Cockerell at Wikimedia Commons
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