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Walter Sickert seated with Mrs Sickert after opening the Bath Art School Exhibition,
June 1939, with l-r: Councillor G.J. Long, Rosemary Ellis, The Mayor, Lord Methuen,
The Mayoress, Clifford Ellis.
1936, not long after their arrival, and soon were elected to the Society's Selection Committee, choosing works for the annual exhibitions. The came to know many of the local artists, including Lord Methuen, a painter, who had trained under Sickert and who lived at Corsham Court. Sickert himself came to live at St George's Hill House, Bathampton, two or three miles from Bath, with his third wife, Therese Lessore, in 1938. In March 1939 he wrote to Clifford Ellis suggesting he visited the Art School once a week, without charge. The offer was accepted and he came each Friday to talk to students punctually at 11 am until 1 pm, continuing to within a few months of his death in January 1942. Ellis had got to know him well and used to lift Sickert into and out of bed during the last part of his life.
In 1938 Rosemary Ellis became the art teacher at the Royal School for Daughters of Officers of the British Army in Landsdown Road. Following the outbreak of the war in September 1939 many Admiralty personnel came to Bath and premises were requisitioned for their use, including hotels, the Technical College and schools, among them the Royal School which moved
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