Enid Abrahams was born into a Jewish family in Hendon, north London. She studied at St John's Wood School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools, where she also later exhibited, as well as with the Leicester Galleries in London, the New English Art Club, the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, and the Royal Society of British Artists. During the Second World, she made work under her maiden name, Enid Abrahams, and was part of an unofficial group of women artists, including Olga Lehmann, Rachel Reckitt, and Elsie Gledstanes, who, much like their better-known male counterparts (among them, Eric Kennington, Henry Moore, Paul Nash and William Rothenstein), made work on subjects such as Air Raid precautions and the work of the fire, ambulance and rescue services. The Imperial War Museum contains correspondence regarding the acquisition of a work on this subject, 'Bells! A Unit of the National Fire Service Answering a Call' (IWM: ART LD 1360), purchased from the exhibition of firemen's pictures at the Royal Academy in August 1941, for six guineas. The file also includes a leaflet for the IWM exhibition 'Some Women Artists', October 1958 - February 1959 which included Abrahams's work. In 2020 her work was included in the exhibition 'Air and Fire: War Artists, the Battle of Britain and the Blitz' at the Royal Air Force Museum, London (27 March 2020 - 28 March 2021). Her later work is signed with her married name Dreyfus and the work in the Ben Uri Collection is unusually signed Abrahams on one side and Dreyfus on the other. Enid Dreyfus died in London in 1972.
Selected exhibition history
2004
The Modern and the New: An Examination of the Permanent Collection alongside New Works by Invited British, European and American Jewish Artists - Ben Uri Gallery
2018
Exodus: masterworks from the Ben Uri Collection
Bushey Museum
