Family

Audrey Joan Amiss was born in Sunderland in 1933, followed by her sister Dorothy 4 years later. Their parents, Arthur and Belle, ran a successful family shop in the Roker area of the city. Both girls attended Bede Grammar School.

Dorothy later recalled that Audrey and she were close growing up. Like their father, they loved music and duetted on the piano, “playing Schubert’s Marche Militaire at a concert”. Audrey loved nature and the outdoors, staying in youth hostels throughout the North East of England, and maintained a compassion for animals throughout her life. She was athletic, swimming long distances and playing hockey and tennis competitively; she was well-coordinated and could dance the Charleston; and she read the classics of literature, including all of Pepys’s diaries. At this time, Audrey also became a dedicated writer of letters, diaries and even a play.

From an early age it was clear that Audrey was a remarkable artist. After Grammar School she attended the Sunderland College of Art. Taking lessons in oil painting and filling sketchbooks, Audrey established the artistic practice which she continued for the rest of her life. “Every painting in the school vestibule was one of hers,” remembered Dorothy.

Arthur Amiss died in 1951 which had a profound effect on both girls’ teenage years. Audrey was 18, and shortly afterwards she suffered a severe injury to her right hand which for a time threatened her future as an artist. Nonetheless, she was so successful at art college that in 1954 she was awarded a scholarship to study painting at the Royal Academy Schools (R.A.) in London. She completed three years of the course, learning from and with many of the most renowned British artists of her day - at least the male ones.

Audrey did not finish her degree at the R.A. In 1958, she was hospitalised with a mental illness. She returned to Sunderland to recuperate, but soon missed London where the environment was more conducive to the cultural influences on which she thrived. Her mother, Belle, sold up the family business and after 1959 they lived together in London, firstly in rented accommodation and from 1962 in a maisonette in Clapham which Belle bought.

Audrey was not attracted by the prospect of using her artistic skills for commercial purposes and trained as a shorthand typist, working at the Ministry of Labour, and later in an Unemployment Benefits office. She took advantage of cultural life in London, attending concerts, plays and sporting events, such as Wimbledon. She was also a frequent spectator of parliamentary debates and the law courts. Her knowledge of London was encyclopedic. She drew and painted many of the events, people and places she saw in the capital.

Dorothy attended Leeds University and became a teacher. She married Dr John Weatherell, a fellow student, who became an academic at the university. They had two children, Steve and Kate, and they all annually visited Audrey and London Nana in Clapham. Each Christmas the entire family celebrated in Leeds along with John’s parents and sister. For Steve and Kate, their aunt gave them an alternate view on the world: Audrey’s Christmas and birthday presents to them were informed by her keen appreciation of aesthetics and culture. Kate received exquisitely designed bags from the 1960s fashion boutique, Biba, and the Cairo Souk. Steve recalls visits to the Moscow State Circus, Tutankhamun at the British Museum and The Mousetrap. Aged 10, he followed the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race on a launch with his aunt. Audrey never forgot their birthdays; her last self-made cards to her niece and nephew arrived posthumously in 2013.

Audrey’s bouts of illness were frequent. She underwent many spells in hospital and missed some family events. She was often noticeably subdued by the strong medications prescribed to her, and occasionally was manic without them. Audrey disliked how the treatment affected her personality and creative abilities and increasingly declined to take the drugs.

In the late 1980s, after thirty years of helping Audrey manage her illness, Belle became too frail and forgetful and moved to live with Dorothy in Leeds. She died in 1989. Audrey inherited the flat in Clapham and lived there for the rest of her life. She remained in regular contact with Dorothy via letters, but her mistrust of institutions meant her bills were not paid and her phone was cut off. Despite Dorothy’s unflagging efforts, the sisters did not meet during the last decade of Audrey’s life. For Dorothy, it was a profound sadness that mental illness changed Audrey and estranged them. Looking back to their girlhood, she wrote, “How I wish you could have met my Audrey.”

The relationship between the sisters was dramatised by Carol Morley in the feature film Typist Artist Pirate King (2023) in which Monica Dolan portrayed Audrey and Dorothy was played by Gina McKee. The film was dedicated to Dorothy who died in 2022.