Beatrice Charlotte Vernon

Often misspelt Beatrix Dobie or Beatrix Vernon - biography by Debbie McCauley.

Beatrice Charlotte Vernon (nee Dobbie) was born in 1887 (reg. 1887/19475) to Herbert Boucher and Charlotte Anderson Dobbie (nee Gilfillan). In 1911 Beatrice Dobbie and her friend Esther Barker (later Esther Hope) left New Zealand to study at the Slade School of Art in London, under Henry Tonks. At this time Beatrice changed her last name back to the original correct spelling used by her grandfather, Herbert Main Dobie. At the beginning of August 1914 Esther Barker, Kathleen Airini Mair (daughter of Captain Gilbert Mair), Beatrice and her sister, Guildhall School of Music student Agatha Dobbie, were on holiday in the Bay of Biscay. They may have been the first New Zealand women to experience the war up close. Esther took photographs of dead soldiers and Germany prisoners. Beatrice and Agatha made 12 shirts in two days for the French (for soldiers and German POW's). Beatrice and Esther volunteered for Red Cross service and were stationed at the Malta Military Hospital. Beatrice then worked at the New Zealand transfer camp in Codford, England. She returned to New Zealand in 1918 with the NZEF transport.

Esther returned to New Zealand also and both women and painted in the Mackenzie Country. Beatrice exhibited regularly at the Canterbury Society of Arts from 1919 to 1926. She illustrated the book 'Tutira - The Story of a New Zealand Sheep Station' (2nd edition), reprinted with a new preface, map and index in 1926 for William Herbert Guthrie-Smith. Guthrie-Smith writes in his preface: “My thanks are due to Miss Beatrix Dobie for her physiographical sketches, and for her careful and accurate restorations of the old-time pas of the station. I consider myself most fortunate in having secured her services.”

Beatrice went abroad again on a sketching tour with friends. In Tunisia she met French engineer Rene Vernon and the two become engaged. They married at Marylebone in London, England, on 13 July 1925. The Northern Advocate reported (1 August 1925, p. 2):

News of the marriage of Miss Beatrice Dobbie, the New Zealand artist, lately came from London. Miss Dobie went to Tunisia some months ago with her friends, the Hon. Mrs Ralph Vane and Miss Morshead, on a sketching tour. There she met and became engaged to Lieutenant Rene Vernon, of the French Army Reserve, who has the making of roads and bridges for the French Army in Morocco. On July 13 they were married in London in the presence of a few relatives and friends. Those present included Professor Vernon Boys and his family, Commander Oliver Locker-Sampson, M.P., C.M.G. D.S.O. (cousin of the bride), and Mrs Ralph Vane (daughter of the late Captain Gilbert Mair, N.Z.C., of Rotorua and Tauranga). Source: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NA19250801.2.3

The couple settled in Sfax and later Beja. Beatrice continued to paint, sending pictures to exhibitions abroad, including the Empire Exhibition of 1937. Despite civil unrest in Tunisia, and later the outbreak of the Second World War, they remained in Beja, keeping an open house to Allied servicemen. As fighting raged within miles of her home she slept with a dog beside her and pistol under her pillow for protection.

Beatrice was widowed in the 1940s and died herself in Tunisia in 1944. Her post-impressionist oil paintings feature Rotorua, Northland, Mackenzie Country, Malta and North Africa.

An obituary for Beatrice Charlotte Vernon (nee Dobbie) appeared in the Evening Post (28 April 1944, p. 8): NOTABLE N.Z. ARTIST DEATH IN TUNISIA A varied career of unusual interest has closed with the death, at Beja, Tunisia, of Madame Rene Vernon, known in earlier years as Beatrix Dobie, a New Zealand painter of horses and landscape. She was a daughter of the late Mr. H. B. Dobie, of Epsom, and was born at Whangarei in 1887. Some years before the last war she went to London and studied there under noted painters. In 1914 she joined the British Red Cross and did hospital service at Malta and elsewhere, but later was transferred to the New Zealand canteen at Codford, England. Later, while painting in Europe, she married Captain Rene Vernon, of the French army, and made her home in Tunisia. From there she sent pictures to exhibitions in London and elsewhere, including the Empire Exhibition of 1937. It was typical of her; spirit that when fighting raged around her home at Beja, 60 miles from Bizerta; she declined to leave. She kept open house to Allied servicemen, including New Zealanders. Examples of Madame Vernon's work are in the Auckland Art Gallery and at Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin. She is survived: by her husband and a son. Her mother and a number of relatives reside in Auckland.

See also:

• https://www.aucklandartgallery.com/explore-art-and-ideas/artist/106...
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrix_Dobie
• https://www.invaluable.com/artist/vernon-beatrix-charlotte-9c5pztlk1y
• http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nzlscant/art.htm
• Who´s Who in New Zealand and The Western Pacific, 1925