Rachel de Montmorency

Who is Rachel de Montmorency?

Rachel de Montmorency, née Rachel Marion Tancock was an English painter and artist working in stained glass. She learned about stained glass when she worked for artist Christopher Whall in the 1910s and 1920s. During World War I she worked as a voluntary nurse.

After she married Miles de Montmorency in 1931 the couple often worked together on her commissions. She was a follower of the Arts and Crafts Movement.

She was born on 15 July 1891 at Rossall in Lancashire. Her father, the Rev. Charles Tancock D.D., was the headmaster of the public school there. Tancock was to move and became headmaster of Tonbridge School in Kent and here he hired stained glass artist Christopher Whall to create a set of windows for the school’s chapel.

Rachel became one of Whall’s pupils after completing her studies at Heathfield School. She studied painting and stained glass-making whilst assisting in Whall’s studio. She assisted Whall and Edward Woore with windows at Sorbie Church in Wigtownshire in 1910. It was here that she would have met Edward Woore, Karl Parsons, and Arnold Robinson

She was accepted in 1914 as a probationer at the Royal Academy Schools but when war broke out that year she chose to put her painting studies on hold and enrolled in the V.A.D. Voluntary Aid Detachment as a nurse and worked in that capacity throughout the Great War. After the war she became an assistant and then manager of Edward Woore's studio at St Peter’s Square in Hammersmith. In 1925 Woore moved to a studio in Putney and Rachel continued to work with him and also produced her own work, including the St. Botolph’s war memorial window and the T.H. Mason memorial window in the Rottingdean School Hall.