Mary Rosaleen Ellis obituary

Mary Rosaleen Ellis would accompany her husband, the architect Tom Ellis, on what they called ‘Corb crawls’ to see Le Corbusier’s latest pioneering work in Paris and Marseille

My mother, Mary Rosaleen Ellis, who has died aged 96, was a museum lecturer at Tate Britain and later at the Wallace Collection in London.

Rosaleen (as her family knew her – she was Mary to work colleagues) was born in Derby, to Irish parents, Denis Hayes, an industrial chemist, and his wife, Nora. She grew up in Hunts Cross, Liverpool, and then Lancaster. Despite leaving school aged 16, she was extraordinarily well read and later took advantage of the Open University to gain a degree in art history.

Immediately after the second world war, she met the architect Tom Ellis and they married in 1946. The two of them were passionate advocates of the welfare state and she supported his work designing schools and laboratory buildings. My parents lived in a Victorian villa in Ealing, west London, and she would invite young architects such as James Stirling, John Miller and Alan Colquhoun, from the Lyons Israel Ellis practice, home for supper to discuss the architecture of Le Corbusier and other modernists. She would accompany Tom on what they called “Corb crawls” to see the latest work in Paris and Marseille.

Rosaleen volunteered as a Samaritan in Ealing and was one of the early supporters of Shelter, collecting money for homeless people. She was a great listener, offering comfort and hope to those in need, and was a beloved figure in the local community.

In 1976, when her three children had all left home, she responded to an advert in the Guardian for a position in the Tate’s education department. She knocked 10 years off her age and was appointed, spending 24 happy years there giving lectures and tours. She was highly regarded for her insights and presentation skills and gave memorable lectures to varied audiences, including blind people and members of the fraud squad.

In 2001 she moved to the Wallace Collection, and gave her final lecture in 2010 aged 90, when everyone thought she was only 80. What she described as her final act of rebellion was in taking out Irish citizenship as a safeguard against Brexit.

Tom died in 1988. Rosaleen is survived by her children, Charles, Catherine and me, seven grandchildren, Benjamin, Joanna, Josie, Harriet, Thomas, Sam and Martin, and five great-grandchildren, Luna, India, Sean, Nico and Isabelle.