Phila. artist traveled all over to answer call for her murals

Shirley Tattersfield, 81, of Center City, an artist whose murals decorated homes, hotels, a construction fence, and a World's Fair exhibit, died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease May 17 at St. Agnes Medical Center.

The only child of an upper-middle-class family in Chestnut Hill, Ms. Tattersfield graduated from the George School in Newtown; summered in Gloucester, Mass.; and graduated in 1949 from the Philadelphia Museum School of Art, now the University of the Arts.

For the next three years, she struggled to make it as a freelance fashion illustrator, getting few jobs and lots of rejections.

Then in 1952, when she was turned down for another job, her career as a muralist was born. An executive at the old Franklin Simon department store in Center City told her that he couldn't use a fashion illustrator but did need a mural.

Ms. Tattersfield designed a 175-foot panoramic caricature of women shopping on bargain day, and it was a hit. She began designing murals for other department stores in the region.

As her reputation grew, she began receiving commissions from hotels in Philadelphia and out of town.

In 1958, she painted a mural for a hotel in Hallandale, Fla., and was then asked to paint the half-mile fence concealing a swampy residential construction site in West Palm Beach, Fla. While she and her assistants painted, a crew followed along to shoot at any alligators that threatened.

By the mid-1960s, Ms. Tattersfield was supervising a staff of seven in a large studio on Cherry Street in Center City. She had commissions from all over the United States and from other countries.

She traveled so much, she told an Inquirer reporter in 1964, that "when I wake up in a hotel, I have to send for the papers to find out where I am."

In 1964, Ms. Tattersfield created a 78-foot mural for the Travelers Insurance Cos.' pavilion at the World's Fair in New York. The mural illustrated how Earth came into being from a universe of gases and was constructed from stained glass, Plexiglas and shattered marbles.

Ms. Tattersfield's father, Gerald, was a wool importer and globe-trotting amateur photographer whose experiments with film and color filters inspired his daughter to be innovative when working on her murals.

Many were textured, abstract and heavy. To mount and display her weighty pieces, she told The Inquirer in 1965, she had acquired a working acquaintance with engineering and architecture.

Her work could be abstract or realistic, such as the romantic rose garden she designed in 1989 for the banquet room on the 19th floor of the Bellevue Hotel, now the Park Hyatt at the Bellevue. The work is no longer there.

Ms. Tattersfield retired about 10 years ago. By then, her studio was in Manayunk, and she had slowed down.

Ms. Tattersfield was flamboyant, like the eccentric dancer Isadora Duncan, said Davis D'Ambly, a friend and colleague.

With classic features, blond hair and blue eyes, she strongly resembled Grace Kelly, said Robert Bruce, a longtime friend.

In 1964, she told an Inquirer reporter that a teacher in art school had refused to look at her homework because he thought she was too pretty to make it as an artist, and should just get married.

She was married at least once. That marriage ended in divorce by 1958.

Ms. Tattersfield had no immediate survivors.

Services were private.

Memorial donations may be made to the K-9 unit of the Philadelphia Police Department, Attn.: Capt. Kenneth O'Brien, 8501 State Rd., Philadelphia 19136.