Lots of coverage over the past week for the new show at the Barber Institute of Fine Art at Birmingham University. They have put on the first ever exhibition exploring tennis in art, “Court on Canvas”.
Aside from the pioneering paintings by the “Glasgow Boy”, Sir John Lavery, my own favourite is a fabulous Laura Knight of tennis in suburban London.
And this is my mother, Doris Parsons (above, second left), relaxing with unidentified friends at Newton Tennis Club in Birmingham in 1930. I’ve just lent the photograph to the Barber.
Of course, as I wrote in an earlier post (19 June 2010, “Inventing lawn tennis: a tale of two Majors”), lawn tennis was born in that city.
From her photograph albums, it is clear that my mother was already a member of Newton from 1919, when she was just nineteen years old. She was born and brought up in the suburb of Moseley and tennis appears to have been a central part of her social life as a young woman. It was a new way in which young ladies could socialise without the benefit of chaperones – a significant shift pointing the way towards the modern world.
And she may well have first met my father, the recently graduated Dr John Clarke Neill, there. Newton was one of the city’s earliest clubs (founded in 1884), and was particularly associated with the medical profession. He was captain of the university tennis team in 1932.
Note: they are all smoking! My guess is that it was still perceived as a health-promoting activity in 1930.
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