PRIMMER, Kathleen

1914 - 1995

Kathleen Melanie Forbes Primmer, also known as Kate, was born at Palmerston, Dunedin, New Zealand on 10 January 1914, daughter of Scottish born Jacob Hope Primmer (12 March 1885-12 June 1917), M.R.C.V.S., a veterinary surgeon, and his wife, French born Melanie Sophie Forbes (4 January 1884-17 January 1977), daughter of Litton Forbes, M.D., who married at Marylebone Parish Church, London on 9 March 1912 and they sailed for New Zealand living at 6 Granville Terrace, Belleknowes, Dunedin, New Zealand. Kathleen's father Jacob was mobilised with New Zealand Forces in 1914 as captain in the New Zealand Veterinary Corps and served in Egypt, Gallipoli and France as a Captain with NZVC and was killed on 12 June 1917, aged 32, whilst sheltering with artillery soldiers in a cookhouse during a violent storm which was struck by lightning whilst fighting at the Battle of Messines in Belgium during the First World War and is buried in Kandahar Farm Cemetery, Heuvelland, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium. His widow and daughter Kate, who had been waiting for him in Paris, then returned to live in England. Kathleen was educated in New Zealand, Switzerland and Paris and studied at the Royal Academy Schools, at the Central School of Arts and Crafts and at École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. She exhibited at the Royal Academy and illustrated 'Scandinavian Peasant Costume...With notes by Melanie S. Primmer, with eight plates in colour and sixty-four pages of pencil drawings' (1939). In 1939, Mrs Melanie Sophie Primmer and her daughter were living in Stowmarket, Suffolk and Kate was a member and exhibitor at the Norfolk & Norwich Art Circle 1954-1955 from Stowmarket and in 1954 she exhibited at the Bury St Edmund's Art Society held at the Bury St Edmund's School of Art Building. They later moved to 44 Lyndewood Road, Cambridge where her mother died on 17 January 1977. Kathleen Melanie Forbes Primmer died at Highsett, 80 Hills Road, Cambridge on 25 September 1995, she was unmarried.

Royal Academy Exhibits
from 85 Prince of Wales Mansions, Southwest London
1935 502 Portrait of the Artist

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Works by This Artist