Biography
Muriel Gertrude Samuelson Wilson (b 1893. Saltburn-by-the Sea, UK - d. 1977), the daughter of Sir Francis Samuelson and married to the artist Bassett Wilson (1888-1972), had a privileged upbringing and had an aptitude for watercolours and flower-pieces at an early age. Her first recorded show is one with her husband at Walker’s Galleries, in 1921. The couple lived in Paris during the 1920s and were friends with local artists whilst both working in the vstudio of André Lhote.
They had a show at Lefevre Gallery in 1929 where the Contemporary Art Society bought a flower picture by her (Chrysanthemums) which was presented to Leicester City Art Gallery in 1931. She also became an expert photographer, tutored by Man Ray. In 1930 the Wilsons travelled to New York and Chicago for shows at Knoedler. She continued to have group shows at Lefevre, Darlington Municipal Art Gallery, the Salon des Tuileries in Paris, and also at Galerie Gerbo and L’Association Florence Blumenthal and at the Rhyma Group at Helsingfors, Finland (1934). During the war Muriel worked with refugees in France, then with the Motor Transport Corps in England. The Wilsons’ pictures were looted or destroyed in Paris and Muriel declined to work for about a decade after the end of the war. In 1981 Patrick Seale Gallery, London held a posthumous show of both artists’ pictures.
