STEEL, Beatrice Mary
Beatrice Mary Steel was born at 5 Butter Market, Ipswich on 10 March 1886, daughter of John Steel (1848-6 April 1918), a grocer, and the first of his three wives, Georgiana Ashford (1854-8 January 1888), seventh daughter of George Ashford of Ipswich, who married at St Peter Mancroft, Norwich on 23 March 1882, Georgiana died at 5 Butter Market, Ipswich in 1888, aged 34, and the following year John married Laura née Norman, who died in 1896, aged 36 when he married for a third time, in 1900 Edith née Bishop who died in 1924, aged 55. John was a partner in the Ipswich firm of Miller & Steel, grocers at 5-7 Butter Market, Ipswich where Beatrice was living in 1891. In 1911, the Steels were living at 12 Gainsborough Road, Ipswich and later moved to Crowfield, near Ipswich. Beatrice studied at the Ipswich School of Art where one of her fellow students was Nellie Elizabeth Dorothy Coe. In 1913, three of Beatrice's works were on show at the Ipswich Fine Art Club 'Old Archway, Fore Street', 'Old Gateway, Salthouse Street' and 'A Sproughton Field', and in 1916 she had two more works on show 'Chapel Screen, Southwold Church' and 'Sunset over Blythburgh Common'. A painter in oil and watercolour and an etcher, she became a member of the Ipswich Art Club 1919-1938, exhibiting from Pear Tree Farm, Crowfield, Ipswich in 1927, five watercolours 'A Westmorland Cottage', 'Hemingstone Church', 'Spring at Coddenham', 'Late Autumn, Coddenham' and 'Old Houses, Coddenham' and exhibited at least forty-one works 1919-1931 including building studies, local landscapes and some garden scenes such as an oil 'A June in the Garden' (1923). By 1939, she had returned to live at 42 Newbury Road, Ipswich where Beatrice Mary Steel died on 23 May 1947, aged 61, she was unmarried.