(1910 - 1989)
Born in Burnley, Lancashire, Pamela Drew was the daughter of a cotton printer. She studied art at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art, in London, and also in Paris, before marrying an Irish peer, William Robert Rathdonnell, 4th Baron Rathdonnell of Rathvilly, County Carlow, in 1937. The couple lived in the Rathdonnell family home in Ireland until the outbreak of the Second World War, when they moved to the UK. A photographic portrait of Baron Rathdonnell, taken in 1939, is held in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery.
During the Second World War, Pamela joined the Wrens, working with the Royal Air Force Coastal Command in Plymouth. As a result, many of her paintings from the 1940s have an aviation theme - and eventually, in 1955, the British Air Ministry granted her the status of War Artist. Baron Rathdonnell died unexpectedly in 1959 and two years later Drew remarried Major Hugh Carruthers Massy of Ballynatray, Youghal, County Cork. Drew enjoyed several exhibitions of her work in the UK and abroad. Today, examples of her work are held in the collections of the Imperial War Museum and the Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon.
