Ricketts attracted disciples as varied as the writer Cecil Lewis the artist

Ricketts attracted disciples as varied as the writer Cecil Lewis, the artist Glyn Philpot and the illustrator T Sturge Moore. Max attended Dulwich College, then the Byam Shaw Art School, 1927-30, where he was taught and befriended by Charles Ricketts. Ricketts was then nearing the end of his life as an influential painter, illustrator, stage designer, sculptor and connoisseur. He was an inventive, committed painter whose career reflected the quandary facing many artists this century: whether to follow figuration or abstraction. He was born in Dulwich, south-east London, in 1911, his father, Joshua, university-educated, his mother, Bertha Cregeen, an artist of Isle of Man origin whose two sisters, Emily and Nessy, also exhibited portraits. THE ARTIST Max Chapman was one of the last links with the rarefied aesthetic world of Ricketts and Shannon in the 1920s and the later Bohemianism of Soho and Fitzrovia. Certainly her film for the BBC2 series Picture This, for which I was commissioning editor, was both a little masterpiece and one that was utterly unique.We desperately need the Ellies of this world, and, while we mourn her passing, we should also salute her courage and her artistry, which I hope will encourage and enlighten those who come after her.Eileen (Ellie) Veronica O'Sullivan, teacher and film-maker: born Dublin 15 May 1947; (one daughter), married 1985 Peter Benjamin; died London 18 November 1999.. As a result, she was able to establish herself as a clear and individual artist, with work that is quite distinctive.

In doing so, she found in all whom she met an intrinsic value that she could not then exclude, which is why her funeral was one beautiful, multifarious voice.Ellie O'Sullivan had something that has become increasingly rare in our world - a quiet but steely integrity which ensured that she pursued her artistic goals, and her vision, regardless of corporations, finance or the many other constraints upon the individual voice, writes Peter Symes. In the former, broadcast on BBC2 in 1996, she asked adult siblings to express their rivalry and respect for one another. In the latter film, as yet unshown (being completed hours before she died), the stakes were raised even further, as only Ellie dared, with daughters expressing their complex and often unrequited love for their fathers.Ellie O'Sullivan was someone who looked for and therefore found the meaning in everything, be it an episode of EastEnders or the death of a friend. Here she made her first film.Ellie O'Sullivan's last two films, Who Do I Love the Most? and Five Degrees of Absence, are in many ways the culmination of her love of and fight for the unheard child's story. O'Sullivan gave up formal teaching and an MA in film studies to concentrate her energies solely on making films, begging to become a member of the Clapham and Battersea Film Workshop when she found it was over-subscribed. It was also during this time in her life that she first contracted the breast cancer she was to fight for the next 18 years.

She worked as a volunteer for the charity Task Force, where she met her future husband, Peter Benjamin, took a degree in History at London University and a teaching certificate at the Institute of Education, and went on to teach English at Mary Boon Comprehensive in Fulham.It was here that her own extraordinarily "voiceless" childhood gave her the empathy necessary to understand and encourage the voices of others. The creation of a new family life brought O'Sullivan further meaning and direction. Her second film, A Family Album, exempiflies this philosophy. Using interviews with members of Ellie and her sister's families, juxtaposed with family photos representing their public personas, the mood becomes one of intimacy and intensity, where blame is not apportioned, nor answers provided, but a montage of family life celebrated simply by virtue of its existence and expression.