Mabel Olive Wood, known as Olive, was born in 1883, one of four children of James FR Wood, a printer turned artist, and Letitia Lester. In 1899, when Olive was six, the family moved to Elms Road, now Gilkes Crescent in SE21. Letitia died the same year and in fact Letitia’s father, who lived in Landells Rd, lost his wife and both his children in a seven-year period. Olive became her father’s housekeeper and when he died in 1920, she and her sister Daisy continued living together in Gilkes Crescent for the rest of their lives.
Olive trained at the Clapham and Camberwell Schools of Art and became a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy.
She painted numerous miniatures including tenor Richard Tauber and the musician Freda Dinn, who lived in Elmwood Road but mostly she was a children’s book illustrator and seems to have been influenced by Walter Crane, one of the originators of the genre of English children’s illustrated literature in the later 19th century.
In WW1 Olive served as a driver and in 1917 painted herself in uniform. She has a painting in the Imperial War Museum and 75 works in the V&A collection. She died at Gilkes Crescent in 1973, aged 89.
