Mary Wheelhouse
Mary Vermuyden Wheelhouse (12 December 1867 – c. 1947) was an English painter, illustrator, toymaker and suffragist. She helped lead the Women's International Art Club (WIAC) and was active in the Artists' Suffrage League (ASL).
She was born in Leeds, the youngest of three sisters. Her sister Ethel Hamerton Wheelhouse became a professional violinist. Her father, Claudius Galen Wheelhouse, was a physician and photographer who later led the British Medical Association; her mother was Agnes Caroline Wheelhouse (née Cowell). Mary studied at Scarborough School of Art and then in Paris at the Académie Delécluse. The WIAC was founded by students from that school, and Mary served on its executive committees from 1904–06 and 1908–14.
From 1900 she lived in Chelsea with artist Louise Jacobs. They made wooden dolls and ran Pomona Toys in Cheyne Walk, renting space from Marion Dawson who lived upstairs. Their toys were sold to Fortnum’s, Liberty’s and Harrods, and they showed them at the 1916 Arts and Crafts exhibition in London. The partnership ended in 1922, but Mary kept the business going until just before World War II. She shared Pomona Studios in Fulham with painter William Dickson and with the artist couple Charles B. Praetorius and Minnie Cormack.
Wheelhouse also illustrated many books, especially works by women writers such as George Eliot, Juliana Horatia Ewing, George Sand and Elizabeth Gaskell. Her drawings were shown in group exhibitions, including the Baillie Gallery in 1912. As a suffragist, she served on the ASL board, which used art to promote women’s voting rights, and she created political cartoons that were published as postcards.
She died in 1947, aged about 79. In 2024, the Heath Robinson Museum in Pinner, London, held its first solo exhibition of her work.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 19:44 (CET).