UCT students eat their meals every day in a dining hall decorated by herself and her students in the 50’s after she founded the School of Design at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, where she lectured for 12 years.

She won a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art in London 1930 and one of her first works was a commission from Sir Herbert Baker to decorate walls of the new SA Embassy in Trafalgar Square. The murals used egg tempura- an egg yolk, water and powder colour mix and took three years to complete, depicting rural life in Kwa Zulu Natal. Eleanor was born and educated in Dundee in that province and her painting reflects her childhood memories, focusing on women going about their daily tasks.

One of her former students is now a professor himself at Michaelis. Bruce Arnott rememered her teaching style:
“We were very privileged to be taught by her as Eleanor’s Design course was excellent. What characterised Eleanor’s projects was how she structured them to reflect professional practice. Designs were developed not only from an aesthetic point of view but were subject to the constraints of formal commissions. Projects were site specific, posited a specialist client, and had to take structural limitations and production costs into account."

“Studies were framed to provide a foundation for a professional practice. We were introduced to the basics of presenting concepts, acquired grounding in negotiating contracts, and later on could begin to find our way when our peers were mired in the torments of the commercial world.”

Bruce believes that her experience working with Sir Herbert Baker at South Africa House in London, where she undertook pioneering mural painting was invaluable to her.

“Those works are a testimony to her exacting standards, and a reminder of how fortunate our generation of students were to have been taught by this astute and exceptional artist.”

The bulk of Eleanor’s works are in private hands, although the National Gallery has a few paintings.

Her surviving relative, her nephew Raymond looked after her affairs in later years of when she was becoming mentally confused.

Raymond says “She left her estate to my two daughters though she did not take much interest in the family in general. She was a dedicated artist first and foremost. She married briefly a Corfusian (could one say ?) and lived a while in Corfu with him, but that broke up and she returned to Cape Town. She was a beautiful woman incidentally, and her brother (my father) was also a handsome dashing man, especially in his WW2 RAF uniform !”

The latest sale of one of her paintings was at the February Khan family auction at Sotheby’s in Constantia, where a small Esmonde–White work sold for R325 000.

David Zetler, owner of Hout Street gallery, was a friend and agent for thirty years:
“First and foremost Eleanor was a brilliant graphic artist – a great draughtsman. Everything she did was structurally sound and this translated into her oils and her woodcuts in particular, which are exceptionally sought after.

“Mostly her subject matter was women. She enjoyed the theatre and liked painting ballet dancers. In a quiet way she was a feminist and ahead of her time but never strident or aggressive in her beliefs. She was a gentle, sympathetic and well-like person. Her colours were secondary, low key and she used very few but they were brilliantly mixed.”

At present a biography is being written by artist/author Leanne Raymond, who finds Eleanor a wonderfully interesting subject and someone whose full, varied life is well worth the chronicling.