Janet Cree

{{Short description|British painter}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

Janet Katherine Cree (1910 –1992) was a British painter specializing in egg tempera.

The daughter of Arthur Thomas Crawford "Dick" Cree, a barrister, and Ivy Williams, an artist, she was born in London. Her father was killed at Ypres in May 1915 while serving with the Durham Light Infantry. Cree attended the Byam Shaw School of Art from 1928 to 1933.{{cite book|author=Frances Spalding|publisher=Antique Collectors' Club|year=1990|title=20th Century Painters and Sculptors |isbn=1-85149-106-6}} Her 1932 work The Oriental Portrait was acquired by the Tate gallery. She was commissioned by Bishop George Bell of Chicester to paint murals for churches. She married the barrister John Platts-Mills in 1936. Cree stopped painting during the late 1930s to raise her family, only resuming her art career in 1967. She exhibited her work in various galleries in London and Sussex, also showing regularly with the Royal Academy. Cree and her husband were friends of the politician Henry Devenish Harben. They were interviewed about him in December 1976 by the historian, Brian Harrison, as part of his Suffrage Interviews project, titled Oral evidence on the suffragette and suffragist movements: the Brian Harrison interviews.{{Cite web |last=London School of Economics and Political Science |first= |title=The Suffrage Interviews |url=https://www.lse.ac.uk/library/collection-highlights/the-suffrage-interviews |access-date=2025-02-20 |website=London School of Economics and Political Science |language=en-GB}} Cree returned to New Zealand with her husband in 1981. Cree died in 1992 at the age of 82 from complications after undergoing heart surgery.{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=r5I-DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA164 |title=The Expatriates |pages=164, 169, 203 |last=Edmond |first=Martin |year=2017 |publisher=Bridget Williams Books |isbn=978-1988533148}}{{cite web |url=http://romanianstudies.org/content/2006/05/13/orpheus-never-turned-up-for-tea-considering-a-painting-by-janet-cree-1910-1992/ |title=Orpheus never turned up for tea – considering a painting by Janet CREE (1910-1992) |publisher=Centre for Romanian Studies}}{{cite web |url=http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/cree-the-oriental-portrait-n04707 |title=The Oriental Portrait |publisher=Tate}}