Elizabeth Senior

In similar vein, Thomas Kendrick, who was to become Director of the British Museum in 1950, included this comment in the preface to his book Late Saxon and Viking Art,

Elizabeth Senior (1910-11 May 1941) was an art historian and Assistant Keeper in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum. She was also a book editor for Penguin Books.

Senior was killed in a German air raid while at home in her flat at 17b Canonbury Square in London in the early hours of 11 May 1941 and cremated at Streatham Park Crematorium on 17 May. This was the same air raid that badly damaged the British Museum.

Senior had a six year long affair with the married Thomas Kendrick who at the time was 14 years her senior. When she became pregnant, she decided in spite of the scandal that while Kendrick didn’t want to keep the child, she would, as she had always wanted a child. In 1941 Senior gave birth to a daughter, Sally Maud Senior who was born in her grandmother’s house in East Dean in Sussex. The birth was registered in the first quarter of that year. Senior's early death during The Blitz came around ten weeks after Sally Maud was born. Sally Maud was found alive stashed for safety under a table amongst the wreckage of their home by an ARP warden. Senior’s sister who was also in the house at the time survived the air raid.

"...I acknowledge an irredeemable debt to my colleague Elizabeth Senior, who was killed in 1941, for she gave me invaluable assistance with her camera and her sketch-book, and I know well that her sensible suggestions and courageous opinions have brightened and improved almost every chapter I have written. Flet tamen admonitu motus, Elissa, tui'." The Latin phrase suggesting a more personal memory of her.

As the threat of war grew closer Senior helped secure safe passage for those fleeing Nazi Germany and became a friend to a number of eminent Jewish emigre art historians including Ernst Gombrich, Yvonne Hackenbroch, Edith Hoffman, Ernest Kitzinger (who she had met in Munich) and Fritz Saxl- Kitzinger. She used her contacts to help them find homes, jobs and publishing opportunities. Senior also travelled to Germany where claiming to be “an official representative of His Majesty’s Government” she urged Ernst Kitzinger’s parents leave the country. She then conveyed them to her mother’s house in England from where they were later able to emigrate to Palestine. Senior's professional relationship with Gombrich, Ernst Kris and Ernst Kitzinger was further cemented when she worked in her spare time as editor of the King Penguin series of books from 1939 to 1941. She also co-authored with Kitzinger the book 'Portraits of Christ' from the same series.

In 1934 Senior was chosen over Alec Clifton-Taylor for the role of Assistant Keeper in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum. In doing so she became the first female antiquities curator at the museum and also the first qualified professional in her department as all of the others had classics or history degrees.

In the early 1930s she spent a year studying art history in Munich.

Elizabeth Senior was born on 29 June 1910 in the village of Dore in Derbyshire (the village is now in South Yorkshire) to Sally Gertrude (nee Ashworth, 1876-1963) and Oliver Senior (1880–1943). She had two siblings, Derek and Margaret Leonie “Peggy” (1916-2006). Her father was the author of How to Draw Hands, which was published by Studio in 1944.