Something of a Mystery – Who Was Ivy Achlan Achoy?

Posted: February 10th, 2025 | 1 Comment »

Visited the Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines exhibition at the gallery at Charleston at Firle in East Sussex (the old home of Vanessa and Julian Bell). It’s on till February 25 2025. The two artists founded the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in 1937, first in Dedham and then at Benton End, Suffolk. Morris (1889-1982) was also a keen portrait painter (as well as his better known flower paintings) and the exhibition features a range of his portrait work. Lett-Haines was more of a surrealist.

Among the various Morris painted portraits is one dated as 1922 (which may or may not be correct) and said to be of “Ivy Ichaloy”. It is a portrait of a Chinese woman in a cheongsam-style dress from the upper body up. It is noted that the portrait is on loan to Charleston from Gainsborough’s House, the birthplace of the English painter Thomas Gainsborough and now a museum and gallery in Sudbury, Suffolk.

However, the name “Ichaloy” is misleading and this appears to be a woman actually called Ivy Achoy. Wherw “Ichaloy” comes from I do not know.

Which leads us to who was Ivy Achoy? Well, she was a Trinidadian Chinese, born and raised in Port of Spain before coming to London. Her full name was Ivy Achlan Achoy. In Trinidad she was an artist and art critic involved (and perhaps an original founder) of the influential Port of Spain-based “Society of Trinidad Independents”. The group also included Amy Leong Pang (like Ivy a Trinidadian-Chinese, who had studied painting in China), Hugh Stollmeyer (an Englishman from a colonial family who studied art in New York), Alice Pashley (an Englishwoman who painted batiks), and Alfred Menzies (an artist I believe).

The Society was a modernist grouping, looking to “shock the bourgeoise”, discussing racism, sexism, capitalism and homophobia. In 1931 one member, Albert Gomes, founded their journal The Beacon which also involved the (now very well known) writer and historian CLR James. The group disbanded in 1938 after being accused by the colonial government of being “Bohemian” for trying to exhibit a series of Russian-painted nudes. Now scholars generally see the Society as intellectually important in Trinidad and Tobago.

I’m afraid I don’t know any more about Ivy – why she was in London, or how the portrait came to painted by Morris? So any additional information most welcome?

---