The Painting
A pen, ink and watercolour measuring 15" x 18½". Signed Nina Carroll and inscribed:
‘greenhouses / 64 Banbury Rd, Oxford / Nina Carroll /Feb 1975’.
About the Artist
Nina Carroll (1932-1990) was a designer of murals, an illustrator of children’s books
and a watercolour artist. She studied at Cheltenham School of Art and at the Ruskin
School, Oxford. She lived in Kettering and later in Oxford. Her husband, John Steane,
was headmaster of Kettering Grammar School in 1964 to 1976. Both Nina and her husband
were founder members of the Kettering Civic Society, and John became their first
Secretary. She exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Royal Society of Watercolour Painters,
the Society of Women Artists and the New England Art Club. Her works are in the collection
of the Guildhall Museum, Northampton and the Alfred East Art Gallery in Kettering,
amongst others.
The Subject
Greenhouses at 64 Banbury Road, Oxford. No. 64 Banbury Road is a detached 1860s yellow-brick
villa in a Gothic style, built as part of the Norham Manor estate in the Victorian
suburb of North Oxford. The estate was laid out by William Wilkinson. He also designed
some of the houses, which were illustrated in his book English Country Houses (1870).
The first occupants of the estate were mainly the richer tradespeople of the city,
but by the end of the 19th century there were many college dons living there, as
well as outsiders attracted by the social cachet of the fashionable suburb. No. 64
now houses the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, part of the
School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at the University of Oxford.
