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Evelyn Cheston, née Davy, (8 September 1875 – 31 October 1929), was an English landscape painter, in both oils and watercolours.[1][2]
Born in Ranmoor, Sheffield, Evelyn studied at the Royal Female School of Art from 1892 to 1894, and then at the Slade School from 1894 until 1899.[2] While at the Slade, she won a joint award for figure painting with Augustus John, for her work A Negress Seated, Seen from Behind.[3]
Evelyn went on to join Walter Russell’s landscape painting class in Richmond, Yorkshire, where she met her future husband, Charles Cheston; they married in 1904.[2][3] She exhibited at the New English Art Club from 1906, and became a member in 1909. The impact of the impressionist works she had seen in Paris in 1912, and the influence of her Slade tutor, Philip Wilson Steer, were evident in her use of colour and light.[1]
Shortly after Evelyn’s death at her home in Musbery, Devon, on 31 October 1929, a memorial exhibition was held at the Royal Society of Watercolourists; a retrospective was held at the Mappin Art Gallery in Sheffield two years later. Her husband published a book on her life and work in 1931, in which he described the discrimination she had faced as a female artist.[2][3]
