Duffy Ayers

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Duffy Ayers (born September 1919) is an English portrait painter.

Born Elizabeth (Betty) Fitzgerald she trained at the Central School of Art in London. She later married the painter and printmaker Michael Rothenstein RA. In 1941 the couple moved to Chapel Cottage in the Essex village of Great Bardfield. The following year the couple relocated to Ethel House in the centre of the village. Duffy and Michael were important members of the famous art community resident in the north Essex village during the post war period. At Bardfield she was mainly known as Duffy Rothenstein, although she still used to sign her work by her early career name, Betty Fitzgerald. The Rothensteins and the other village artists organised a series of large open house exhibitions, which garnered much press attention during the 1950s. During this time Duffy was mostly painting portraits and she exhibited some of her work at the 1955 Great Bardfield Artists’ summer exhibition.

By the end of 1955 her marriage had dissolved and she left Great Bardfield although she maintained an interest in the work produced by her former neighbours. Now living in London she married the graphic artist, Eric Ayers (1921 - 2001). After her second marriage she painted under the name of Duffy Ayers and regularly exhibited at the Royal Academy. One of her oil portraits, ‘The Arrival’ (1993) is in the North West Essex collection of the Fry Art Gallery, Saffron Walden. She has two children from her first marriage, Julian and Anne.

References:

Martin Salisbury, Artists of the Fry: Art and Design in the North West Essex Collection, Ruskin Press, Cambridge, 2003.

‘Artists of Great Bardfield’, Hearts and Essex Observer, 15 July 1955.