Painter, freelance illustrator, muralist, portrait copier, restorer and teacher, born and mainly lived in London, who, after a difficult childhood, studied at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, 1948–50, teaching there, 1959–60. She won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, 1950, graduating from the painting school with first-class honours, 1954, and in that year an Edward Austen Abbey Scholarship to Rome. Carel Weight, who taught at the Royal College during her time there, eventually becoming professor of painting, remained an admirer of Connie Fenn’s work. Their paintings share a taste for eccentric figures. In 1953 Fenn participated in a large international exhibition in Milan. She showed with the NEAC, 1958–74, of which she was a member, 1969–74, also exhibiting at RA Summer Exhibition from 1956–72; Wildenstein, 1961; and widely elsewhere, having solo shows at Zaydler Gallery, 1973, and Imperial College, 1975.
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Fenn visited France, Germany and America to paint and eventually to exhibit. As a painter she was influenced by Christopher Chamberlain and William Coldstream, as an illustrator by Edward Ardizzone and Susan Einzig. Her pictures included a series of London river scenes with Chagall-like couples floating in the clouds. Fenn’s paintings use a rich, highly personal palette, perspective and iconography. As a draughtsman she was capable of exquisite and assured drawings in ink using distinctive hatching. Periods of mental instability undermined Fenn’s career, during which she had to be hospitalised, and she depended heavily on the support of Chamberlain, his wife the painter Heather Copley, Weight and his wife the artist Helen Roeder. Apart from odd exhibitions at such places as the South Place Ethical Society, in her final years Fenn had no regular dealer. She died unremarked in Clapton, east London. Duncan Campbell Fine Art in collaboration with Gabriel Summers showed a fine, revelatory collection of Fenn’s oils on board and works on paper in 2005.
Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)
