Career
Josefina de Vasconcellos attained runner up in the 1930 Prix de Rome contest. That same year she met the artist Delmar Banner (died 1983), who was also an Anglican lay preacher, and whom she married in 1930. This was a great shock to her parents, who had forbidden the subject of religion in their home. Her husband led her to be received into the Church of England, and the topic of faith came to run through much of her artistic work. They adopted two boys, and the family settled in a farmhouse at The Bield in Little Langdale at the heart of the Lake District. She carved in an outhouse at the farm while Banner painted dramatic landscapes from the summits of the Lakeland fells. In 1967, through associations with Pelham House in West Cumbria, the family helped found the Beckstone Centre, an Outward Bound-type facility for disadvantaged boys at Beckstones in the Duddon Valley.
In 1975, she initiated the founding of The Harriet Trust, on the shores of the Duddon Estuary at Millom so that disabled children could enjoy nature holidays within a purpose-built dwelling; the modified former fishing trawler The Harriet was used as a recreation space. It was such work that led to de Vasconcellos being honoured in 1985 with the Order of the British Empire.
Throughout her life de Vasconcellos undertook numerous large commissions that were vehicles for her flowing, naturalistic style of carving. At times this contrasted with fashion, for example the period where mainstream sculptured art was toying with the more abstract styles of Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. Although raised as an atheist, de Vasconcellos' works were frequently religious. Much of her sculpture can be found in parish churches and cathedrals around Britain, including St. Paul's Cathedral and St. Michael's, Coventry, as well as cathedrals in Blackburn, Bristol, Carlisle, Gloucester, Liverpool, Norwich and parishes such as St Bees Priory and St Mary's Church, Warrington
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