At a time when mothering and marriage were considered the pinnacles of womanhood, Ethel and Katharine (Kate) Tucker were career women blazing a trail through Bermuda’s art world.
Ethel was born in 1874 and Katharine five years later. They were two of eight children born to Robert and Leonora Tucker of The Lane House (now Tamarisk Hall), Paget. In their adult lives they lived at The Arches on Berry Hill Road and were known as “The Arches Tuckers” to distinguish them from other Tucker families.
Great niece Wendy Tucker described her beloved aunts as “independent and ahead of their time”. She said: “Ethel was the one who was more reserved and Katherine was more outgoing and was the business woman of the two. They got on very well together, and they were very close. Their personalities were so different that they complimented one another.”
As a young girl Ethel took lessons from an American artist teaching at a school in Bermuda. She was further encouraged by James B. Heyl who was making up albums of his own photographs, some of the earliest taken in Bermuda. He offered to pay Ethel to illustrate the margins of his albums. She asked for a shilling a page and received the staggering sum of 18 shillings, enough to buy an evening gown in those days. Suddenly the future seemed boundless for the young woman.
At 18 years old she went to New York City to study art. She soon returned to Bermuda to collect younger sister Kate, and took her back to New York with her. Ethel spent two years studying art at the New York School of Applied Design for Women. In the evenings she and her sister made cotillion favours in their bedroom to meet living expenses. They spent several years in the United States and Canada working at a variety of jobs, as designers for manufacturers of art embroideries; with the New York branch of Raphael Tucker in London, in an interior decorating studio on Fifth Avenue; and as teachers in an art school. In 1911 they published a book called ‘Bermuda: A Few Highways and Byways’. They also opened tea rooms in a number of touristy spots such as Muskoka, Canada, Lake Placid, New York and in Florida.
They returned to Bermuda just before the First World War and opened the Island’s earliest souvenir and gift shop on Queen Street. Their tea shop ‘The Little Green Shop’ was located where the Perot Post Office is now, and was known for a flag they flew over it with a teapot on it to attract tourists. When the powers that be of the day decided that the flag violated advertising rules, they smugly replaced it with a flag with a ‘T’ arguing that the T stood for “Tucker” and therefore was not advertising. They had many distinguished patrons including writers Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), Rudyard Kipling and playwright Eugene O’Neill.
Back then, a day’s profit was nine shillings. Their idyllic water colour paintings of Bermuda houses and scenery became so popular with visitors that they decided to have colour reproductions made. Kate, who was more of the business woman, went to Germany to get in touch with a well known colour printer, and the sisters invested their meager savings in their first picture postcard of a Bermuda scene, oleanders and sea water in Somerset with a peep of a distant cottage, painted by Miss Ethel. Over the next 40 years they had about 100 different Bermuda scenes reproduced.
Their work even proved to be popular with royalty. When the Duke of Windsor came to Bermuda in 1921 as the Prince of Wales, he bought 20 paintings from the Tucker sisters. This led to Queen Mary ordering some, and the Tucker paintings are still included today in the royal collection.
The Little Green Shop closed in 1958. They ran several other businesses including an antique shop at the top of Burnaby Hill and a branch at the old Castle Harbour Hotel. They were also active on a community level. They started recreational clubs for youngsters on the Island, and Miss Ethel was a life Vice President of the Bermuda Historical Society.
They travelled extensively throughout their lives. Their great niece Wendy Tucker, remembered going with Kate to England on a business trip when she was 15. After the First World War their postcards were printed by distinguished printer J. Salmon of Sevenoaks, Kent, England.
Ethel died in 1962 and Kate followed in 1970. Neither of them ever married or had any children. Their work can now be seen at art galleries in Bermuda such as Masterworks Museum and the Bermuda National Gallery, and can also be found online, auctioning for over $1,000.
