Margaret Tarrant

Tarrant, Margaret Winifred.  1888-1959.  Born in Battersea, the only child of Percy Tarrant, the landscape painter and illustrator.  She studied at Clapham School of Art where she won several awards, and at Heatherley’s School of Art after which she decided to become a full time artist and illustrator.  Aged nineteen, her first commission was to illustrate Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies.  From 1921 she worked largely for The Medici Society, painting children’s pictures, flowers and views of the Surrey countryside where she lived. She is also famed for her many religious pictures, which graced many a school and nursery as Medici prints.  In 1936 on a trip sponsored by the Medici Society, she spent six weeks in Palestine gathering authentic material.  Her sketchbooks from this trip are supplemented by a fascinating diary.