Norah Briggs

UK

1905 to 1989

Shirley Sherwood’s mother, Norah Bailey, trained at Leeds School of Fine Art, now part of the University of Leeds. After she married Geoffrey Masser Briggs they moved to St Albans, Hertfordshire and she continued painting every day of Shirley’s childhood. She executed the watercolour of a press dried specimen of Aristolochia sp. that Shirley had collected during a visit to Pakistan in 1948, shortly after Partition. It was the first work she had done of a pressed plant and it is beautifully painted.