Everyone who met Ophelia Gordon Bell was struck by her. Even if they did not know of her artistic skill, they were witnesses to her great vitality and kindness. And on the day, in 1940, that she and her aura entered William’s studio for the first time, with hair streaming wet from the rain, all William had to do was what any living, breathing bachelor would have done and notice it.
Born in London in 1915, the daughter of society animal painter Winifred Joan Ophelia Gordon Bell, she knew that she wanted to be a sculptor by the time she was 15. So she went to Regent Street Polytechnic Sculpture School in London. There she was taught by the eminent names of the day to work with stone, wood, metal, clay and plaster.