Mildred E. Eldridge

Mildred Elsie Eldridge known as Elsi Eldridge, (1 August 1909 – 10 March 1991) was a British artist, mural painter and book illustrator.

Biography Eldridge was born in Wimbledon in London where her father was pawnbroker who later became a jeweller. She attended Wimbledon School of Art before studying at the Royal College of Art where she was taught by William Rothenstein and Eric Ravilious. Returning to England in 1936 she worked, along with Evelyn Dunbar, Charles Mahoney and others, on a large scale set of murals based on Aesop's fables at Brockley County Secondary School, now the upper site of Prendergast School in Brockley.

In 1937 Eldridge held a very successful solo show at the Beaux Arts Gallery in London. Following a 1939 commission, executed with Muriel Minter, for a stained-glass window at Llanpumsaint parish church, Eldridge moved to Wales. She designed the dust-jacket for his first volume of published poems, Stones of the Field in 1947 The mural was put into storage in 1999 but from 2011 has been on public display at Glyndwr University.

Eldridge had a number of solo exhibitions during her career, notably at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth during 1959 and at the Powys Fine Art Room in Welshpool in 1961. and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff hold other examples of her work. Compassionate Herbs by Hilda Leyel, (Faber and Faber, 1946) South Wales and Monmouthshire (Vision of Wales) by Tom Richards (Elek, 1949) The Star-born by Henry Williamson (Faber and Faber, 1948)

Books written and illustrated Gwenno the Goat, (Hart-Davis, 1957) In My Garden, (Medici Society) The Sea Shore, (Medici Society, 1986)