Catherine and her twin brother Ronald were born on June 27th, 1904, in Harpenden, a small village near London. There were two older brothers and sisters. Her family, who were related to the Yarrow shipbuilders, were financially very well-off. After her father’s untimely death in 1912, all vestiges of discipline disappeared; her mother suffered from long periods of depression and the children were left to run wild. Eventually Catherine was sent away to boarding school where she admitted to being ‘a terror’ and very naughty. She found the whole education system very silly with its dedication to turning its students into young ladies. Her rebellious spirit was very much in evidence and she was expelled from several schools, much to her mother’s disapproval.

Although she was accepted by, and studied drama at, RADA for a short time, where Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud were among her contemporaries, she had developed a dislike of Britain and all things British, feeling stifled by conventional society. At twenty she moved to Paris with a deep longing to learn. She had been to Italy and Spain and decided to study architecture, taught by a private teacher who told her to go and learn to draw. This is when she first discovered where her interests lay. Her studies were interrupted when she accompanied her mother on a journey around the world that took place over eighteen months visiting the Far East, New Zealand and Australia.

Catherine, now in her early twenties, then went to live in the South of France where she and a lover shared a house with the poet, Pierre Reverdy, who became a close friend and mentor, and taught her about poetry, art and food. She said of this period that she felt she was learning to live for the first time.

In her mid-twenties she moved to Paris. She told of a conversation with Jean Renoir, the film maker, who said to her that Paris between the wars was un sacré miracle. It was a café world where Catherine, the young, vibrant, beautiful English rose, came to know many of the artists of the time. She found amongst these artists a recognition she was never to find in England and they generously supported and nourished her gifts.

She resumed her drawing and painting studies and learned engraving at the now legendary Atelier 17, the studio set up by William Stanley Hayter in 1927. It was here that she met Giacometti, one of the great loves of her life.

Some of her work from this period survived the war and forms part of the existing archive of her large body of work.

Catherine eventually managed to persuade the Master potter – José Llorens Artigas - who taught Joan Miro and Picasso – to accept her as an apprentice.

She remained friends with Artigas until his death in 1980.

Throughout her life Catherine battled with anxiety and depression. For a time in the 1930’s, after a disastrous love-affair, she went to live in Zurich where she met Dr C G Jung and was befriended by his daughter, Gret, who was very kind to her. She spent time in a clinic in Morges where she was helped by a man she described as a rebel Freudian. He encouraged her to paint – striking, rather disturbing images – of a soul in torment.

Back in Paris, as Europe marched inexorably towards war, Catherine and Michel Lukacs, who was to be her lover and companion for the next ten years, were caught up in the turmoil, neither of them wanting to leave. However, in 1940 they narrowly escaped the Nazi occupation, leaving Paris in Catherine’s car, which she drove (without brakes!) south to Saint-Martin-d’Ardèche where they persuaded her long-time friend Leonora Carrington to accompany them, a journey described by Carrington in her book: ‘The House of Fear’. They eventually reached Lisbon and, like many of their friends and fellow artists, boarded a ship bound for New York.

Yarrow and Lukacs lived in New York from 1940 to 1948, where she was again a contemporary of the surrealists who like herself, sought refuge in America after fleeing France. Friends and fellow artists included André Brèton, Marcel Duchamp, Yves Tanguy, Stanley William Hayter, Alexander Calder, the Chilean artist Roberto Matta, Max Ernst and Leonora Carrington. Up to this stage of her life she had been financially supported by her family but, with the outbreak of war, funds were no longer available and Catherine, for the first time in her life, was forced to earn a living. She continued making ceramics, became friends with Carol Janeway (ceramicist and author) whom she mentored and instructed and with whom she probably shared a studio. In April, 1943, she exhibited ceramics alongside paintings and drawings by Max Ernst at the Julien Levy Gallery.

From June 12- July 1943 she exhibited at Peggy Guggenheim’s ‘Art of this Century Gallery’ in ‘The Women’s Exhibition: 30 women surrealist artists’ alongside Leonora Carrington, Louise Bourgeois, Pegeen Vail and Gypsy Rose Lee. In December 1944 Catherine exhibited terra cotta necklaces at the Willard Gallery, located at 32 East 57th Street, New York City.  

Records exist of Catherine spending time in the summer months, holidaying south in the Hamptons, north of New York, in north-western Connecticut, (Kent Hollow). Winters were spent in the city.

Peggy Guggenheim, on return to the USA and marriage to Max Ernst, moved to East Hampton.  Catherine is documented as having worn the first ‘bikini’, a hand-knitted two-piece bathing costume, at one of these beach parties.  Diarist Anaïs Nin makes a cruel reference to Catherine and her partner Michel in her New York (1940 – 48) diaries that caused Catherine huge distress.   The accuracy of Nin’s descriptions, and her motives, are open to speculation, given that she tended to be salacious on many occasions.   Perhaps Nin’s meanings are best revealed in one of her own quotes: “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are”.

A more settled group of artists had moved to north western Connecticut (e.g. Gorky, Tanguy).   A letter written in 1947 by Jeanne Reynal to Mougouch Gorky describes:

The friction that existed between Catherine and Louise Bourgeois is documented from the latter’s perspective in a 1995 interview with an art historian.  Louise Bourgeois made 30 slender carved wooden figures in the time period 1947 – 49, which are now owned by the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.  One was titled ‘Portrait of CY’.   Bourgeois had made a representation of Catherine in 1947, a five and a half foot tall bronze post, painted white, in which she hammered nails at approximately the level of the human heart.  

New York writer and photographer Milton Gendel illustrated the camaraderie and fun that also existed.He recalled:

The New York Times, in December 31st 1945 (page 15) describes an apartment fire in which a young woman died.   Catherine and Michel lived in this building, and narrowly escaped over the rooftop to an adjacent building.   They lost all their belongings, and a pet cat in the fire. Now penniless, Catherine was inspired to work in leather and created a unique and original collection of shoes, sandals, bags and gloves which were taken up by Bergdorf-Goodman and other 5th Avenue stores. They became very popular and were photographed for Vogue Magazine. This enterprise enabled her to fund her return to England in 1948.

Catherine found it very difficult to be back in London where her relationship with Michel was frowned upon and she deeply missed her friends and contemporaries. Eventually she bought a large house in St John’s Wood where she was able to have a studio and workshop.

In June 1950, an exhibition of her paintings was held at the Hanover Gallery, London. The catalogue preface by Mary Hutchinson is a touching description and insight into Catherine’s work at the time and also captures the essence of her originality and the unique style that marked her work in the years to follow: