Those who visit the beautiful College of Psychic Studies building in London are struck by the exquisite, gilded, colour-saturated paintings that adorn many of our walls. These depictions of spirits and otherworldly creatures are the works of spirit artist and automatist Ethel Le Rossignol (1873-1970). They've been a charismatic presence at the College since 1968 when she donated them to us.
Ethel the Automatist
Constance Ethel Le Rossignol was born in Argentina to a family with ancestral roots in Jersey. She studied art in London before serving as a nurse during the First World War. Her artistic career really took off when she started channelling artwork from a spirit she called JPF. It is JPF, she claimed, not Ethel who should be credited for the extraordinary paintings.
Ethel channelled 42 magnificent works of art from JPF. These were exhibited in a 1929 show at the London Spiritual Alliance, which later became The College of Psychic Studies. She compiled the images alongside JPF's transmitted teachings in the 1933 publication A Goodly Company: A series of Psychic Drawings Given Through the Hand of Ethel Le Rossignol as an Assurance of Survival After Death, a copy of which we hold in The College of Psychic Studies' library.
Ethel claims she herself didn't visualise the other world that's so vividly depicted in her artwork. Rather, the spirit of JPF revealed it to her gradually through a transmission of thought, energy and movement. The sinuous lines of colour in Ethel's paintings are expressions of these waves of thought and energy and movement. As JPF transmitted through Ethel on 24 May 1920, "Only the wave of thought is what I send, not a drawing of lines."
Ethel Le Rossignol in The College of Psychic Studies collection
The College of Psychic Studies' archive is fortunate to have all 21 paintings from the A Goodly Company series, but not the 21 pencil drawings – their whereabouts remains a mystery. We also have one of Ethel's paintings that she completed much later in the 1950s.
Ethel Le Rossignol died in London, aged 96, just two years after she donated her paintings to us. She lived in South Kensington near The College of Psychic Studies.
A singular quote on the title page of A Goodly Company reads: 'And the Heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.' F.W.Faber (1814-63)
All images © Ethel le Rossignol / The College of Psychic Studies. Above: A clipping from Light about Ethel Le Rossignol's exhibition at The College of Psychic Studies in 1929.
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