July 2023 – my daily art display

Clara Klinghoffer. Part 4.

The Latter Years

Portrait of a Girl by Clara Klinghoffer

Clara’s stay close to Menton with her husband and youngest sister had proved to be a great success and their plans to return home to London had been postponed on a number of occasions. The decision as to whether to leave their rented villa, Villa Aggradito, was taken out of their hands eventually as the owner needed the villa for a long-term rental over the coming winter, and the price for renting the villa was well beyond their means. They eventually moved and found Villa Josephine, a small ground floor flat with a small garden in the small Nice suburb of St. Sylvestre which was run by an elderly woman, Madame Rigolier. No sooner had the trio moved to their new home in September than Clara declared she was pregnant. Madame Rigolier immediately took on the role of “mother” and saw to all Clara’s needs. Clara’s husband on seeing that his wife was being well looked after decided to return to London with Clara’s youngest sister, Hilda. Clara was not being left alone as they invited Joop’s brother, who had not been well, to come and stay and they believed he would benefit from the warmer climate during the winter months.

Portrait of a Young Girl by Clara Klinghoffer (1960)

With winter over Clara and Joop had to decide on their next move. Clara was not happy with the medical help she received from the local doctor but could not afford the charges levied by the hospitals and doctors in Nice. Clara and Joop left the Côte d’Azur in early March 1927 and headed to England with a two-day stopover in Paris. They managed to rent a small ground floor flat in the London suburb of Hendon.

Portrait of Cera Lewin by Clara Klinghoffer (1935)

On May 28^th 1927 Clara gave birth to their first child, a daughter, whom they named Sonia. The family finances were not good. It was true that Clara was selling her work to various galleries but by the time you deducted gallery commissions and the cost of painting materials there was barely any profit. Joop was struggling to find newspapers and magazine willing to buy his journalistic offerings and so the couple struggled financially. He was also aware of Clara’s family’s disappointment in him for not being able to provide for his wife. However, on a positive note, Clara’s fame as a talented young artist was spreading into Europe. The art critic of the leading Amsterdam Handelsblad wrote:

“…Clara Klinghoffer is among the few of her generation who have succeeded in circumventing the many pitfalls adhering to the work of most younger painters in England. Her recent ‘Old Troubadour is praised by leading critics as her best work to date. And rightly so, for in spite of the forcefully realistic conception of this picture, it is free of all coarseness, while the blending of its colours may safely be described as refined…”

Such favourable comments with regards to her work appeared in newspapers in England and throughout Europe and her work was being shown in a number of major exhibitions. Despite the continuing high praise from art critics the sale of he work was slow and her husband believed this was due to the poor publicity of the galleries were her work was on show.

My Sister Beth by Clara Kinghoffer (1918)

At the end of 1927 the family’s luck took a turn for the better when Clara’s husband, who could speak French and German, was offered a job as secretary to an American industrialist, Ray Graham, one of the three Graham brothers, who headed up the Graham Paige Motor Car Company of Detroit. He was arriving in Europe and needed a well-travelled multi-linguist as his aide-de-camp.

Girl with Plaits by Clara Klinghoffer

Ray Graham eventually returned to America and offered Joop a position in Detroit but Clara was horrified at this offer and her husband had to turn down the job. All was not lost however as Graham then offered to set up an agency for his car company in Paris and wanted Joop to head it up. Clara was not averse to living in Paris so Joop accepted the job offer. They relocated to the French capital in the Spring of 1928 and rented a small flat in the Avenue de Chatillon on the Left Bank which was an area where many artists lived. Their home was not at all what they expected and the manageress, who seemed to be an alcoholic, was both unpleasant and unhelpful. Clara was unhappy and wrote about their home and the surroundings:

“…High up from my window I look down upon the square, grey and desolate. The rain has not left off since last night. The immense puddles are filled with little bubbles that swim about till they burst. The square is new, and the road still unmade. To the right a house is in the making: an incomplete red structure, bricks, mortar and wood are piled up and scattered about. The workmen have not come. Factories and many-storeyed flats arise on all sides. A distant funnel gives out a grey smoke, with irritating slowness. At the end of the square a tram passes by, then a taxi. A group of people und.er umbrellas go past quickly. Then, for at least four minutes, not another human soul is to be seen…”

Heemstede Canal behind Rudi’s House by Clara Klinghoffer (1932)

Unhappy with their present flat they were pleased to hear about an ideal house for them from a friend of Joop, a fellow journalist. It lay some ten miles north-west of Paris in the village of Montmorency. The house was in the rue des Berceaux, close to the railway station, and both Clara and Joop were pleased to make it their home. The little ‘villa’, as they called it had a large corridor leading from the front door, spacious living rooms, a large kitchen and a bedroom. A wide staircase led to more bedrooms and the bathroom. At the rear of the property there was a small, enclosed garden. Both Clara and Joop were pleased with their new home.

Mother and Child by Clara Klinghoffer

Having had her first solo exhibition at Hampstead Gallery in 1920, she held her first solo exhibition abroad in April 1928 when fifteen of her paintings and thirty-five sketches were displayed at the Nationale Kunsthandel in Amsterdam. Following the success of this exhibition Clara was bombarded by galleries, such as the Imperial Gallery, The New English Art Club and the Woman’s International Art Club, for more of her work for their future exhibitions.

Untitled (One of Clara’s sisters) Chalk on paper by Clara Klinghoffer ©the artist’s estate. photo credit: the artist’s family

Joop was still working from his Paris office for the American car company Graham-Paige and Clara was so busy painting that she had to employ an au-pair, Anne-Marie, to look after baby Sonia. However in October 1929 life in America was rocked by the Wall Street crash and the Great Depression. The Presidential hopeful Herbert Hoover’s phrase “two chickens in every pot and a car in every garage” in his speech the previous year, now had a hollow ring to it. Joop’s boss’s car firm was all to do with high-end cars and they were hit badly. People were laid off and money spent on publicity, which was Joop’s area of expertise, was cut back. Joop began to realise that his job was in jeopardy. Fortunately, he heard that the Paris branch of the American publicity house of Erwin Wasey had advertised for a linguist to assist their executive in charge of all West-European advertising for Esso products. He applied for the job and was taken on. Meanwhile Clara had submitted a number of works to London’s Redfern Gallery and it had proved to be a great success even though financial problems were having an adverse effect on sales of works in both France and England.

Lakshme by Clara Klinghoffer (1918)

Life was to change in 1930 when, in July that year, Clara found herself pregnant with her second child. Around the same time Joop was “head-hunted” for a position at Lord & Thomas & Logan, a publicity company who were looking for a Dutch-speaker with a Dutch background who, at the same time, had the necessary experience in the international publicity field. Joop was exactly who they were looking for and he, and after speaking to Clara, agreed terms with his new employer. Clara was not unhappy about the move to The Netherlands as she had enjoyed her previous stay there and Amsterdam to London was a short distance to travel when she needed to talk to London gallery owners.

Grandmère and Sonia by Clara Klinghoffer (c.1930)

Joop travelled ahead to set up his Amsterdam office and a month later Clara joined him. The couple found it difficult to rent suitable accommodation in the city and eventually, in the Autumn of 1930, settled for a small house in Heemstede- Aerdenhout, just south of Haarlem. There they waited for their household furniture to arrive from Paris. Once again Clara, who was now heavily pregnant, needed help with looking after her daughter and husband and so they hired a maid to help with the chores. It was not a good time for Clara and she became very stressed.

Portrait of Bananas the Pedlar by Clara Klinghoffer (1923)

On the twenty-fifth of January 1931 Clara’s second child, a boy, was born. They called him Michael Jacob. The name Michael was chosen because they simply liked the sound of it, and Jacob because that was the name of Joop’s late father. With the birth of her son, Clara’s mood and physical health improved. They even employed a German girl, Hettie, as nurse for the baby, but as Jews, they soon became wary of her and her questions relating to them and their families. It proved later that the nurse was feeding this information back to the German embassy. After confronting her, she hastily left the family home. Help did materialise when her sisters, Leah and Hilda came to live with them during the summer. In late 1931 Clara’s mother-in-law came to live with her and her son and she remained with them until she died in 1935.

Rosie with Apple by Clara Klinghoffer (c.1929)

The start of 1932 was a very sad time for Clara as she received news that Rosie, one of her younger sister and for many years one of her favourite models, had been ill for some times. At first her illness did not seem to be a very serious one. But her pains increased and then, on being examined by a specialist, Clara had to face the awful truth: that the girl, just about thirty years old, was dying of cancer. Clara travelled to London at once and stayed there for some time, drawing as she always did and making an exquisite painting of Rosie. Several doctors were consulted; even a Dutch physician of Utrecht who supposedly had a cure for cancer, was persuaded to send each week a bottle of his magic medicine to London. But it was, of course, all in vain. Rosie died that summer. It was a very hard blow. From now on the magic circle of the seven Klinghoffer girls existed no longer. For some time the loss of Rosie paralyzed Clara’s desire for work. Then, gradually, she took up her brushes again and painted.

Giuseppina by Clara Klinghoff (1934)

In 1932 Hitler came to power when the Weimar Republic collapsed. The National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (Dutch Nazi party) led by Anton Mussert became more prominent following the rise of Hitler and grew more challenging, stressing ever stronger the anti-semitic principles of the Filhrer. On February 27^th 1933, the Reichstag in Berlin was set alight by a twenty-three-year-old Dutchman Marinus van der Lubbe and, as in Germany, anti-semitic tensions in The Netherlands grew fanned by inflammatory articles appearing in Mussert’s weekly newspaper Volk en Vaderland (People and Fatherland). Notwithstanding the political tensions Clara and Joop managed to get away and have a holiday in Taormina, Sicily where they stayed in a small hotel which had beautiful vistas across the bay. They became friendly with the owner, Ettore Silvestri and his daughter Giuseppina who agreed to pose for Clara. She said that posing for long periods would be a problem to her and Clara and Joop discovered she had been very ill for five years, an illness that tired her. In August 1935 whilst back home Joop and Clara received a letter from Taormina informing them that sadly, Giuseppina had died.

One-eyed Mexican Farmer by Clara Klinghoffer (1962)

In 1939, the anti-semitic feelings in The Netherlands had begun to escalate and there was talk of a Nazi invasion of the country and so Clara and Joop decided to move to London. They packed up all their furniture and Clara’s paintings and they were stored in a warehouse in Haarlem but sadly their property was plundered during Nazi occupation. When the Second World War ended Clara divided her time between her studios in London and New York. In New York Clara held a number of exhibitions of her work but the interest in her figurative art was waning as the art world had latched on to the new abstract expressionism, by the likes of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and suddenly Clara’s work was considered unfashionable and she struggled to attain exhibition space, even in London. In 1952 she visited Mexico and she was attracted to the colourful landscapes and had no trouble finding locals who would model for her. Her last exhibition was in 1969 at the Mexican/North American Cultural Institute in Mexico City. She then returned to Europe and spent time in Southern France. Her health began to deteriorate and she returned to London where she died on April 18th, 1970 at the age of 69. Clara is buried at the Cheshunt Cemetery near London.

Clara Esther Klinghoffer (Stoppelman) 1900-1970

I end with a 1981 quote by Terrence Mullaly of The Daily Telegraph who wrote about Clara and her artistic talent:

“…If ever there was an artist who for some time has been unjustly forgotten, it is Clara Klinghoffer … While the temporary eclipse of her reputation was not, given trends in the visual arts, surprising, it is certainly lamentable. She was a portrait painter of sensitive talent and, above all, a fine draughtsman … In her work her obvious sensitivity towards her sitters is manifested, and enforced by her ability not only to suggest weight and substance of a body, but also to convey mood … When much more celebrated artists are forgotten, she will be remembered…”

Information for this blog was found in many sources but the most important ones were:

Clara Klinghoffer- 20^th century English artist

Clara Klinghoffer: the girl who drew like Raphael and Leonardo

Clara Klinghoffer. Part 3.

Marriage and travels.

Lucien Pissarro by Clara Klinghoffer (1928)

Clara continued to paint and produce beautiful works of art. She worked constantly at her easel from daybreak till sunset. She was awarded a bursary by the Slade allowing her to attend classes three days a week for a year and receive tuition from the Slade Professors of Art, Frederick Brown, and Henry Tonks. However, Clara only continued with this tuition for a few weeks, preferring to paint on her own at home. In 1921, the excessive workload she had given herself and her innate perfectionism finally took a toll on her health and she suffered a breakdown and suddenly the desire to paint had left her. She was suffering badly both mentally and physically, losing weight and becoming gaunt. She talked to nobody about her struggle and her parents could not understand why she spent little time painting. Clara recognised that she was ill and tried self-help but with little success. It was almost a year later when something strange happened to arrest this decline. At the rear of their large house, beyond their garden, there was a low border wall, on the other side of which was a set of newly constructed tennis courts. Clara and her sisters were fascinated and loved to watch the tennis players in action. The courts were owned by a good-looking young man in his early twenties, Julius Abrahams. A close friendship developed and Julius had strong feelings for Clara. Clara painted a full sized portrait of him but as Julius was engaged to another woman, Clara decided that a friendship was all she could offer Julius.

Upon Reflection by Clara Klinghoffer (1919)

Clara continued to build up a portfolio of her work and a number of her drawings were due to be exhibited at the Leicester Galleries in Central London in June 1923. Her drawings caught the attention of a certain Mr Smith who had contacted her and asked to see more of her work. Clara was requested to visit his house in Gordon Square in Central London’s Bloomsbury. Despite disliking trudging across London in wintry weather to visit a possible patron, she needed to sell work to fund her artistic materials and so on January 10th 1924, a Sunday afternoon, she headed towards Gordon Square and to her meeting with Mr Smith – a meeting which would change the course of her life.

Rose with a Mortar and Pestle by Clara Klinghoffer (1919)

Unbeknown to Clara her meeting with Mr Smith was not a one-to-one meeting but she was heading to his house where he was hosting one of his artistic soiree. One of the regulars to these “parties” was an Italian journalist who lived in Hampstead with his fellow lodger, a Dutch freelance journalist, Joseph (Joop) Stoppleman. Joop was invited by his flatmate to come along to the party and reluctantly agreed, on the pretext that the experience might even make good copy for an article. On entering the drawing room of the opulent house the two journalists were greeted by raucous singing led by their host, Mr Smith. Midway through the party the doors to the Salon opened and Stoopleman in his biography, Clara Klinghoffer, The Life and Career of a Traditional Artist described what happened next:

“…the Study door was opened and a small girl with beautiful auburn hair, entered, carrying a portfolio much too large for her to hold with any comfort…”

The revellers were bemused by the sight of this small girl. Mr Smith, who was halfway through giving his rousing speech to his guests, stopped and rushed towards Clara, taking her portfolio from her and raising it in the air, whilst acclaiming:

“…”Now my young friends you will have the privilege to see art that is on a par with the work of the great Masters. And who has created it? This little girl–Clara Klinghoffer. Mark that name well, for one day it will be famous…”

The portfolio of Clara’s work was then placed on the large table at the centre of the Salon and Clara showed each of her paintings and drawings to the guests. They were all amazed by what she had created. When the party came to an end Joop Stoopleman offered to carry the heavy portfolio for Clara until she reached the trolleybus which would take her home. He wanted to see her again and was both surprised and delighted when Clara asked if he wanted to visit her at home and see more of her work. He avidly agreed and they exchanged telephone numbers and a date was set for the next meeting. This was the start of a long friendship which resulted in a love affair and which would eventually result in marriage. Joop was well received by the family but as a freelance journalist he knew he could not boast a regular steady income. As for Clara, she relied on the sale of her work so that their combined income was somewhat irregular.

Harriet Cohen by Clara Klinghoffer (1925)

The new year, 1925, was a very busy time for both Clara and Joop. Clara worked steadily on her drawings and paintings. One of her sitters was Harriet Cohen, the celebrated British concert pianist. At the same time, she was organising her work for a large-scale exhibition in the Redfern Gallery, in Old Bond Street, which was to begin in March of 1926. Clara had collected together twenty new paintings and some thirty new drawings. By the time she had put together sufficient work for the exhibition she was both exhausted and deflated. Her spirits were lifted when she was invited to accompany her friend Mabel Greenberg on a month-long holiday in the Pyrenees. Clara, on her return home at the end of April, was refreshed and was filled with ideas that could be used as depictions for her future paintings. In parallel to Clara’s busy schedule, Joop had to go on a trip to Holland visiting chief editors, to see if he could find new outlets for his writing.

Portrait of a Girl in a Fur Hat by Clara Klinghoffer

During the New year celebrations of 1926, Joop and Clara decided that they would marry once the Redfern Gallery exhibition had run its course. The exhibition which opened on March 9^th was a great success and her paintings received much praise from the art critics. The art critic of The Times wrote:

“…It is perhaps being wise after the event to say that “work has feminine characteristics when an artist is known to be a woman. But this is certainly the case with Clara Klinghoffer’ s exhibition of paintings and dnawings at the Redfern Gallery. That is to say she has the power to imitate with great skill the manner of another painter and yet of toning it down and adapting it to her own less emphatic means of expression, as Berthe Morisot did with Manet. Her drawings and small pictures, rather than her larger oils, show that she has real talent. Her drawings are by far her best work and please at once, though, while they are reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci, they leave out his emphasis and thus their correctness becomes apparent only after close examination. As is the modern custom, they are intended to be works of art in themselves, not studies of works of art, and they do not show the curiosity of an artist who draws to find something out, not to produce a finished effect. They are sensitive, but not profoundly sensitive. Mims Klinghoffer’s paintings are more under the influence of Renoir than of Leonardo, and in her biggest pictures she has tried to be more forcible than is in keeping with the character shown in her drawings…”

Portrait of the Artist’s Husband, aged 25 by Clara Klinghoffer

Once the Redfern Gallery Exhibition had completed, Clara felt utterly drained and Joop persuaded her to take a rest from painting and visit his homeland, Holland. She agreed to the change of scene despite Joop not being able to accompany her from the start as he was committed to leading a tour party to Europe. Joop arranged for her to stay with a family in the village of Voorthuizen and when, after six weeks, Joop finally arrived, the pair travelled north to his home town, Groningen and there she met Joop’s family. Clara and Joop finally returned to London in June 1926 and their marriage took place on July 29^th at the Duke Street Great Synagogue of London. At the time of the wedding Clara’s youngest sister, Hilda had been very unwell. Joop and Clara decided that as they were going to the warm weather of Southern France for their honeymoon, Hilda should accompany them so as to help restore her health. All was agreed with the family and the three of them took the ferry to Calais and then the train south to Avignon for a short stay before arriving at their ultimate destination, the Côte d’Azur seaside town of Menton.

The Old Troubador by Clara Klinghoffer (1926)

The Menton pension they stayed in was very comfortable but quite expensive. In fact, it was too expensive for them as they planned to stay in Menton for six or seven weeks. Clara approached the pension owner and because they intended to stay a long time in Menton, he agreed to lease them a large house, Villa Aggridito, situated on the Boulevard de Garavan, on the outskirts of the town, and only charged them just four hundred francs a month. They took him up on his generous offer. One day whilst out walking they came across a man carrying a guitar. In Joops biography of his wife he recalls the moment:

“…we saw a little man with grey hair standing in the middle of the right-hand lane. He was neatly dressed in black linen trousers and jacket and carried a large guitar on a leather strap across his shoulders. He had a long egg-shaped face, burnt a red brown by the summer sun. His straight nose had wide, sensitive nostrils; his large eyes were of a melancholy brown. His forehead, wide and furrowed, blended into his high bald dome; and above both ears were thick tufts of snow-white hair. On his open shirt collar a neat dress tie had somehow found a foothold. All in all, he made the impression of a musician on the way to an appointment, transporting his instrument in a somewhat unorthodox way. As we approached, he quickly placed the guitar in position, and began to play. First a gay melody, then the popular ‘Valencia’ tune, of which he sang the words in a small, tremulous voice. We stopped and listened. There was nothing about him of the street singer. Rather, he seemed to be amusing himself and, accidentally, allowing us to share his enjoyment…”

The musician was Torquato Simoncelli and he came to their villa the next day and sat for Clara. It took half a dozen sittings for Clara to complete the portrait. On February 16th 1958, Clara wrote about that visit:

“…My husband and I spent the summer and autumn of 1926 in Menton-Garavan, close to the Italian border. It was there, at the border, that we met old Torquato Simoncelli, singing and playing on his guitar. This gentle and lovable old man came to sit for me on the terrace of our Villa, after his day’s work as a Troubadour was over (generally in the late afternoon). He sang, reminisced and played while I painted…. I did paint a second picture of him in another pose (this picture I still have)…”

………to be continued.

The information I used for this blog came from a variety of sources but the two main ones which would be of interest to you if you want a more in-depth look at Clara’s life are:

Clara Klinghoffer- 20^th century English artist

and

Clara Klinghoffer: the girl who drew like Raphael and Leonardo

Clara Klinghoffer. Part 2.

The artistic road ahead.

“…I consider Clara Klinghoffer an artist of great talent, a painter of the first order…
Her understanding of form places her in the very first rank of draughtsmen in the world…”

Sir Jacob Epstein, London, March 30, 1939

Self portrait by Clara Klinghoffer

Fourteen year old Clara was just about to leave St Mark’s School and it is thought that it could have been the head teacher of the school, Mrs Sinock, who suggested that Clara should enrol at Sir John Cass Institute in Aldgate. Once there she was set the task to make sketches of statues such as Michelangelo’s David concentrating on the various facial attributes. Soon the tutors realised she had a natural aptitude for sketching. A talent which she achieved with little effort, one that amazed her tutors. Clara was happy at the Institute but that all ended when one of the young tutors acted towards her in a sexually inappropriate manner which frightened her. The pleasure she once had attending the classes vanished and she left the Institute suddenly without giving a reason for her departure. For a fourteen year old girl this must have been a shocking moment in her life.

Salman Klinghoffer -Man In A Felt Hat (‘Daddy’) by Clara Klinghoffer (1929)

Clara’s father was disappointed that his daughter had given up her art studies and one day whilst travelling home on a tram he caught sight of an advert for the Central School of Arts and Crafts which was situated in Southampton Row in the West End of London He then managed to persuade his daughter to come with him to the art school and enrol. She agreed and took with her a portfolio of her sketches. The principal took a look at her work and immediately offered her a place, starting that next Monday. On the Monday, Clara, who was still very small, arrived at her classroom carrying her huge portfolio case much to the amusement of the two tutors who were overseeing the students. One was Douglas Grant a British painter who became part of the Bloomsbury Set and the other was Bernard Meninsky, the British figurative and landscape painter who had immigrated from Ukraine with his family when he was three weeks old. On looking at Clara’s portfolio, Meninsky was astounded by the quality of her work and set her the task of sketching a cast of a hand. He was astounded by the result and likened it to that of Da Vinci drawings. Both Meninsky and Grant had witnessed such talent in a person so young as Clara and often her sketches were hung on the walls of the classroom. Also on the wall was a print of Botticelli’s Primavera which Clara said that she loved above any other work she had seen. Another of her favourite works was a black and white reproduction of Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne which she had seen a few years ago in the local library. More and more, she became influenced by Italian art.

East End Girl with Dark Hair by Clara Klinghoffer

Meninsky went on to tutor Clara in life drawing and became an important influence on her work. He also introduced her to a number of luminaries of the art world such as Walter Sickert’s third wife, Thérèse Lessore, a British artist who worked in oil and watercolour and was a founder member of the London Group, the English writer and painter, Wyndham Lewis, and the New York born sculptor, Jacob Epstein and his publicist wife, Peggy, who became her close friends.

Harry, Old London Man by Clara Klinghoff (c.1920)

Clara remained at the Central School of Arts and Crafts for two years and during this period would often spend time at her easel, sketching at the Victoria and Albert Museum and her favourite venue, the British Museum, where she became a regular and was well known to the security guards, staff and regular visitors.

Mother and Child by Clara Klinghoffer. Modelled by Clara’s eldest sister Fanny and her youngest sister Hilda (1918)

One of Clara’s fellow students at the Central School of Arts & Crafts was a young man called Seidenfeld, who was besotted with Clara but she alas did not return his amour. He, like Meninsky, praised Clara’s work and would tell everybody who would listen, about Clara’s work and her extraordinary talent. Word of this young artistic genius reached the ears of a journalist, Joseph Leftwich and he was so impressed by her artistic talent that he spoke of it to the post-Impressionist painter, Alfred Wolmark, Wolmark had some of his work shown at the Hamstead Art Gallery in London and he persuaded Clara to put together a portfolio of her work which would be used in her “one-man” show at the gallery in May 1920. That gave her twelve months to complete a collection which was good enough to be exhibited and this entailed a period of non-stop painting. The painting Mother and Child was one which was exhibited at Clara solo show at the Harpenden Gallery in May 1920. The show received rave reviews and of this work, The Sunday Times art critic wrote:

“…Clara Klinghoffer’s ‘ Mother and Child’ will appeal to ‘many as having more sheer beauty than any work in the exhibition. While exceedingly able in point of drawing, this moving painting of a mother just lifting her child “out of the bath delights one by the piquancy of its colour, the shimmer of light on the bare flesh being rendered with the tenderness of a Renoir and the dexterity of a Besnard. In its dazzling radiance it is a joy of pure colour…”

Portrait of a girl in a fur hat, with red background by Clara Klinghoffer

Portrait of Woman Plaiting her Hair by Clara Klinghoffer

In the end Clara submitted twenty-one paintings and thirty-two framed and glazed drawings. On May 3rd 1920 the solo exhibition opened. The London Evening Standard stressed the brilliant future this 19-year-old painter is destined to have. and it continued:

“…One of the most encouraging things about her work is that it gives frank and full expression to what may be supposed to be her racial instincts and interests. She likes exuberant forms and bright colours and says so when painting with commendable frankness. Her strongest point at present is the ease with which she can fill her canvas. Evidently, she has studied the Old Masters, particularly Leonardo da Vinci, to good purpose…”

In 1920, an edition of the The Jewish Chronicle sang the praises of Clara’s work at the exhibition writing:

“…Clara Klinghoffer, in her exhibition at the Hampstead Art Gallery, has clearly proved to be a truly great artist. Her drawings are very beautiful and quite remarkable for an artist scarcely out of her teens. One feels how very much she has been influenced by the Great Masters–by Raphael and by Leonardo for example. And yet, her outlook is entirely modern; she has absorbed the past and expresses herself freely, inspired but never enslaved thereby. Her paintings are always well composed and this is so whether a single portrait or a group is considered. She has a peculiar sense of colour and makes no attempt to get the correct tone, which fact accounts for the unreal appearance of all save one or two portraits. She apparently paints without much effort, and the spontaneity of her work is charming……. There is nothing shallow in Miss Klinghoffer’s genius. She is perfectly sincere and employs her extraordinary gifts for a definite artistic purpose, simply and beautifully, without the slightest trace of affectation…”

The painting Mother and Child was then put on display at the New English Art Club that summer and the press was full of praise for the work

Portrait of a Man (on Red) by Clara Klinghoffer

Meanwhile, her father’s “mill end” business was flourishing, so too was her mother’s clothes shop, so much so, the family moved to a large Victorian House in King Edward Road, Hackney. Compared to their previous London homes, this was paradise. It was large with a basement kitchen, large first floor living rooms and several bedrooms on the upper floors. The increase in the size of their home was fortuitous as Clara’s mother gave birth to a three further children, all daughters, which meant the house was home to mother, father and seven daughters ! Business success for her father meant that he could afford to buy Clara all the materials she needed for her paintings. He and his wife were convinced their daughter would one day become a famous painter.

Portrait of the Artist’s Sister Rachel (Rachel in a Red Dress) by Clara Klinghoffer

Clara would complete small paintings of the neighbourhood children but realised that for her own exhibition at the Hampstead Gallery she would need to complete larger works and so she turned to her sisters, (Fanny, Rose, Rachel, Bertha, Leah, and Hilda), whose ages ranged from four to twenty-one, to act as models, but most frequently Rose (who also sat as a model for the sculptor Jacob Epstein), and Rachel. This shimmering portrait of Rachel is made from delicate brushstrokes and this was a recognisable style of Clara’s portraits and establish her renowned warmth and understanding in the way she depicts her sitters.

Girl in the Green Sari by Clara Klinghoffer (1926)

This portrait, Girl in the Green Sari, by Klinghoffer was that of the Bengali artist Pratima Devi, the daughter-in-law of the famous Bengali poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore. Pratima often travelled abroad with him and they often visited Klinghoffer in her London studio. In all, she completed at least three portraits of Pratima: the first, in oils, around 1919-20; the second, a pencil head, which The Times, in 1924, considered it remarkable for the sensitive drawing and the suggestion of light. This later full-length painting was carried out in 1926, which was the year Clara married and her husband remembers Pratima’s visit and sitting for her portrait. She wore the blue sari and was adorned with dazzling jewellery. Clara had Pratima remove all the jewellery, maybe as she believed it would detract from the woman’s depiction. We observe Pratima as a demure, maybe shy, woman with her eyes downcast, dressed in a translucent sari standing in front of a glistening backdrop.

Portrait of Orovida Pissarro by Clara Klinghoffer

Clara’s arresting portrait of her friend and fellow artist Orovida Pissarro was completed in 1962. Orovida was born in Epping, Essex, in 1893, and was the only child of Lucien and Esther Pissarro. Her father, Lucien Pissarro was an acclaimed artist and graphic illustrator, while Lucien’s father, Orovida’s grandfather, was the renowned Danish-French painter Camille Pissarro who was a founder of the Impressionist movement. Much to her father’s horror, Orovida turned her back on Impressionism – and even dropped her famous surname, wanting to be simply known as ‘Orovida’. Her reason for this was not because she wanted to cut herself off from her family ties but because she wanted to make her own way in life, on her own terms. Clara has depicted the form of her sitter including her rounded belly and full face framed by her cropped hairstyle, which is copied in the curves of the chair. Behind her we see a collection of inanimate objects which probably referred to items which often appeared in Orovida’s portraiture.

……to be continued.

Information for this blog was found in many sources but the most important ones were:

Clara Klinghoffer- 20^th century English artist

Clara Klinghoffer: the girl who drew like Raphael and Leonardo

Clara Klinghoffer. Part 1.

Early childhood and teenage years

Self portrait by Clara Klinghoffer (1937)

“…Now universally recognized as one of the greatest English woman painters, she was a poor and utterly unknown young girl from the East End when her first exhibition took the artistic world by storm in 1919. Hailed everywhere as the girl who could draw like Raphael, her superb technique has always been compared with the Old Masters, but at the time of her first show she had never seen any of the great Old Masters pictures…”

–Women of Today, 1932

My blog today looks at the rise of one of the great female artists. For Clara Klinghoffer’s life story, I want to go back to her paternal grandparents, Abel and Witie Stark who lived in in Szerzezec, a village some forty minutes by train away from the large town of Lemberg, known to us now as the Ukranian city of Lviv, but at the time of Clara’s birth in 1900 it was part of the contested region that was once Polish Galicia, but was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Since Galicia had split from Poland and came under Austrian control, life had been good. The majority of the population of the small town of Szerzezec were Jewish but they had a good working and social relationship with their fellow Christian citizens. It was an easy-going and liberal place to live where both Jews and Christians realised they needed each other. Abel Stark ran a grain business and had achieved lucrative contracts with the Austrian military.

Portrait of Annie Salomans with her book by Clara Klinghoffer (1918)

In 1898 Abel and Witie had one major problem to solve. Their eldest daughter, Chana Riza (Hannah), was twenty four years old and despite her father and mother’s attempts to find her a husband and that of the local shadchan (matchmaker), she remained unwed ! If it was a problem for them, it was also a problem for her two younger sisters, Sarah and Leah, as according to ancient custom, they were not allowed to marry until the eldest sister married first. Eventually a “marriage candidate” arrived who was acceptable to both parents and Chana Riza. He was Salman Klinghoffer. To Chana’s father, Salman was ideal and would be able to work in the family business whilst to Chana herself he had all the physical attributes she found pleasing.

Self portrait by Clara Klinghoffer (1955)

Chana Riza and Salman Klinghoffer were married on March 1^st 1898 at a large ceremony attended by most of the townsfolk and the merriment lasted for many days. The newly-weds moved into her parents home and Salaman began working for his father in law but Salman and his father-in-law did not get on well. They were two totally different characters. Abel Stark was shrewd, dynamic and very determined which was the reason for his success in business. On the other hand, Salaman was a quiet and contemplative man and somebody who shied away from confrontations. Chalk and cheese ! Abel soon became aware that Salman would not eventually be able to take over the family grain business in a partnership with Abel’s son Ephraim and Salman riled at being treated like a lackey by his father in law..

Untitled (Young Woman) by Clara Klinghoffer

Salman and Chana Rizi had their first child, Fegele, in early 1899 and later that year Chana became pregnant once more. Her second child was born on May 18^th 1900. This second daughter was named Chaje Esther after her late maternal grandmother. A third child, another daughter, Reisel, was born on April 4^th 1902. Although the grandparents were happy with the grandchildren, their happiness, at least in the eyes of Axel, was tempered by the fact that Chana Rizi had not given birth to any male offsprings.

Portrait of a Girl Reading by Clara Klinghoffer (1946)

Salman was fed up with life and working for Abel and soon on hearing many stories about the golden land of America decided that his future lay there and he would head there alone, get a job and then send for his wife and children. Sadly Salman was a dreamer. He broached the subject with Abel and Witie who did not oppose his dream and seemed to be pleased to be rid of him. His wife viewed it differently but because she knew her husband was very unhappy, she believed he should grasp the chance to better his life and any way, soon she would join him.

Giuseppina by Clara Klinghoffer (1934)

Salman left Szerzezec but instead of going to America arrived in England in the city of Manchester and took a job as a presser in a tailor’s shop. Nobody knows why he changed his plans of fulfilling his American Dream but maybe he had contacts in the northern English city. At first he corresponded with his wife back home telling her what he was doing but there was never an invite for her and his three children to join him. The arrival of letters from her husband soon became infrequent and eventually stopped altogether. What had happened to him? Had he taken up with another woman? Had he become seriously ill? Had he decided to journey on to America? All were questions that Chana Rizi contemplated. So in 1903, she took the momentous decision to go to Manchester with their two children Fegele and Chaje and look for her husband. Her youngest daughter, Reisel, was left with her grandparents. Chana Rizi was just thirty years old and solo travel was hazardous and she would be arriving in a country whose language she could neither speak nor understand. However, she did arrive in Manchester after a long boat trip during which time she was violently seasick and she eventually located her husband, much to his surprise.

Pastel portrait of Lucien Pissarro by Clara Klinghoffer (1928)

Salman was paid a pittance as a presser but Chana Rizi was determined to stay by his side so they could build a life together even if they all had to endure poverty. It was also at this time that they changed the children’s first names. Fegele became Fanny and Chaje Esther became Clara – Clara Klinghoffer. The family could not make ends meet and so they moved to the Staffordshire town of Hanley. Salman’s wages were better and Clara enjoyed the peace of the small rural town which compared favourably with the noisy and polluted city of Manchester but all was not well with the family dynamics and there was a rumour that Salman was having an affair with a local woman. Chana Rizi, who was pregnant with her fourth child, packed their bags and demanded they returned to Manchester.

Harriet Cohen (pianist) by Clara Klinghoffer (1925)

The family arrived back in the city and rented a property at 18 Irwell Street in the Cheetham Hill district of the city and it was here in late June 1904 that Chana Rizi’s fourth child, another daughter, Rachel, was born. Many years later, Chana went to visit a friend in London and when she returned to Manchester she announced to her family that they were going to move to the English capital and there would be a job waiting for her husband as manager of a drapery shop in Poplar in the East End of London, which would suit him better as the physical strain on him as a presser was proving too much for him and was affecting his health. Salman went first to London to secure somewhere for the family to live. He managed to rent a small East End flat in Puma Court, a tenement block off Whitechapel Road, close to Spitalfields fruit market. Very little good could be said about their accommodation in their Puma Court flat or the neighbourhood and the smell of rotting fruit and veg coming from the market.

Clara’s early schooldays were ones she would rather forget. Ferocious teachers who often meted out corporal punishment with a birch and unfriendly fellow pupils were things she had to put up with. Added to that, her mother fell down the steps of their flat and broke her leg in a number of places which meant she had to rest up in bed with her leg in a heavy cast.

Pen & Ink fashion sketch from Clara’s childhood sketchbook (1913)

Salman was not happy working as manager at his cousin’s drapery shop. He wanted to be answerable just to himself and so he looked to become self-employed. He wanted to be his own boss. He travelled back to Manchester where he set himself up as a “mill end” trader and arranged for bags of “end of roll” materials to be sent to his London home where they were stored in one of their rooms. He and Clara’s mother then sorted them and Salman took them around various tailors selling the cloth. The tailors in those days partly made their livelihood from repairing clothes and so needed various pieces of material. Salman’s business prospered and he was soon able to lease his own shop in Grove Street, off Mile End Road in London’s East End, from where he would run his business and there would be accommodation above for the family. Throughout the day, tailors would call at the shop looking for material. Thanks to the support and ambition of his wife Chana, Salman had become a merchant – a profit-making businessman. Around the early part of 1910 the family moved to another East End property, a roomier three-storey house at 148 Cannon Street Road where Clara’s mother had a dress shop and in April 1914 Salman Klinghoffer applied for naturalisation, probably due to the prospect of war in his homeland .

Photograph of Clara (c.1913)

Clara enrolled at St Mark’s School, a parish school serving poor and largely immigrant children, in nearby Cable Street and despite her sense of foreboding, she found she enjoyed school life and her favourite subjects were history drawing. After school, Clara would return home and spend time in her mother’s dress shop and began to sketch some of the clients. She would also spend time in the large attic which ran the whole width of their house and was used as a room to store her father’s mill ends. However there was a table in the attic at which she sat and sketched. This was her first “studio”.

Girl in Green Sari by Clara Klinghoffer

One of her mother’s clients, a young man, who saw Clara’s sketches told Clara’s mother that her daughter was very talented and she should take art lessons. Clara’s mother was intrigued by the suggestion and she and her husband decided to do something to help their daughter. Studying art at an art school was very expensive but her father and mother managed to raise enough for her to enrol at the John Cass Institute, in Jewry Street, Aldgate.

………….to be continued

Information for this blog was found in many sources but the most important ones were:

Clara Klinghoffer – 20th century English Artist

Clara Klinghoffer: the girl who drew like Raphael and Leonardo

Evelyn Dunbar

Detail from Self portrait by Evelyn Dunbar (1930)

Evelyn Dunbar was born in Reading on December 18^th, 1906. She was the fifth and youngest child of William Dunbar and Florence Dunbar (née Murgatroyd). William Dunbar was a Scotsman who originally came from Cromdale, Morayshire. In 1913, when Evelyn was seven-years-old the family moved to Rochester in Kent where her father established himself as a draper and bespoke tailor. Evelyn’s mother Florence was a keen gardener and amateur still-life artist and a Christian Scientist and soon Evelyn became one and remained one throughout her life.

Portrait of the artists mother, Florence, on a bentwood rocking chair, by Evelyn Dunbar (c.1930)

Evelyn Dunbar won a scholarship to attend the Rochester Grammar School for Girls. From there she enrolled on a two-year art course at the Rochester School of Art, in 1925 and in 1927 attended the Chelsea School of Art remaining there until 1929. That year, she won a scholarship to attend the Royal College of Art where she studied until 1933 at which time she graduated as an ARCA (Associate of the Royal College of Art). Students at the Royal College of Art were encouraged by Sir William Rothenstein, College Principal and Professor of Painting, to find commissions for their work and engage socially with influential art world figures.

Compositional Study for The Pleasures of Life at Morley College by Charles Mahoney (1930)

Cyril Mahoney, known as Charles Mahoney, had been Visiting Painting Tutor at the RCA since 1928 and had carried out a commission to paint a thirty-foot long mural, entitled The Pleasures of Life, at the Morley College for Working Men which he and colleagues completed two years later. In his memoir Since 50, Men & Memories 1922-1938, the first two names that appear on William Rothenstein list of top Royal College of Art students were Henry Moore and Charles Mahoney – the list continues with the names of other leading lights such as Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden, Barnett Freedman Edward Le Bas, and Evelyn Dunbar.

Mural by Evelyn Dunbar at Brockley County School for Boys

In 1932, Mahoney was offered a commission to decorate Brockley County School for Boys (which is now the Prendergast School for Girls) in South London, and following an appeal from Rothenstein for students to experiment further with mural painting, Mahoney chose three of his senior students to assist in the project, Evelyn Dunbar, Mildred Eldridge and Violet Martin. The subjects of these proposed five arched-top panel murals were to illustrate tales from Aesop’s Fables. The painting of this set of murals was not completed until 1936.

An English Calendar by Evelyn Dunbar (1938)

During Mahoney’s work with Evelyn on the mural their relationship intensified and he became her lover. Mahoney and Evelyn shared a studio in South End Road, at the southern end of Hampstead Heath. Besides painting and sketching, they had another shared interest, that of plants and horticulture. Mahoney’s love of horticulture resulted in an amusing warning from Evelyn who wrote to him:

“…Don’t ever have too big a garden, or with your avidity for making the names in the catalogue come true, you’ll never touch a brush or a pencil…”

Whilst working on the Brockley murals Evelyn accepted another commission. Near neighbours to Evelyn Dunbar and Charles Mahoney were Catherine and Donald Carswell, authors and journalists. Donald Carswell had put together a series of short travel stories, to be published by Routledge & Sons, under the title, The Scots Week-End and Caledonian Vade-Mecum for Host, Guest and Wayfarer and needed an illustrator to produce accompanying illustrations.

Evelyn Dunbar: Pen and ink vignettes from The Scots Week-End and Caledonian Vade-Mecum for Host, Guest and Wayfarer (1936)

They approached Charles Mahoney who recommended Evelyn. She agreed to the commission and produced twenty-five pen and ink vignettes, the frontispiece and dust jacket for the miscellany.

Evelyn Dunbar: Pen and Ink frontispiece to The Scots Week-End and Caledonian Vade Mecum for Host, Guest and Wayfarer (1936)

For Evelyn, it was not a labour of love and she wrote to Mahoney about her struggle to complete the commission asking for some moral support:

“…can you tell me why it is that whenever I get going on these blooming Scotch illustrations with vigour and spontaneity all my spontaneous and lively feelings completely desert me, and I am left clutching an unwilling, unwieldy pen, scratching at laborious and second-rate expressions of stereotyped and 5th rate (so it seems to me) ideas? I’m trying my best and I mean to get over it, but jobs of that kind seem to mesmerise me into a kind of stupidity and inability. Write me a few comforting and inspiring lines…”

With the success of the travel book more commissions came from the Routledge publishing house. One of them was for the book, Gardeners’ Choice which comprised of the history, characteristics and cultivation advice for forty garden plants. The book was illustrated in pen and ink, and was jointly written and illustrated by Dunbar and Mahoney.

Design for June for the Country Life 1938 Gardeners Diary by Evelyn Dunbar

More work came their way when the magazine, Country Life, commissioned Dunbar to compose their Gardener’s Diary 1938, a monthly journal and appointments book which contained literary texts chosen by Evelyn and illustrated with her pen and ink drawings.

In 1941 Dunbar collaborated with author, Michael Greenhill by providing pen-and-ink illustrations for his book, A Book of Farmcraft. It was a basic primer of husbandry for those who had little or no knowledge of farming. Michael Greenhill was an instructor of recruits to the Women’s Land Army at Sparsholt Farm Institute, near Winchester, Hampshire. Many of Evelyn’s illustrations, differentiated between the right way of undertaking some agricultural task and the wrong way. For the illustrations, Evelyn used Sparsholt recruits as her models.

Putting on Anti-gas Protective Clothing by Evelyn Dunbar (1940) Composite image of a woman being assisted into an anti-gas suit by another woman

Having looked at Evelyn Dunbar’s mural work and her interest in horticulture, floral paintings and illustrations, one has to remember that she is best known for her depictions of the activities of the Women’s Voluntary Service and the Women’s Land Army during the Second World War. In April 1940 Evelyn was appointed by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee, (WAAC), as an official war artist and later was the only woman artist to receive successive and continuous salaried commissions throughout the war. The WAAC tasked her with pictorially documenting civilian contributions to the war effort on the home front.

Milking Practice with Artificial Udders by Evelyn Dunbar

Land Army Girls going to Bed by Evelyn Dunbar

One of the most important tasks for women besides working in munitions factory was tending the land as so many male farm workers had gone to fight in the war. The first harvest which the Women’s Land Army was largely responsible for bringing in during the summer/autumn of 1940 led to Evelyn’s painting entitled Men Stooking and Girls Learning to Stook.

Men Stooking and Girls Learning to Stook by Evelyn Dunbar (1940)

One of Evelyn’s paintings, A Canning Demonstration, depicted some members of the Women’s Voluntary Service learning how to can and preserve the fruit which had been harvested that summer.

A Canning Demonstration by Evelyn Dunbar

A Knitting Party by Evelyn Dunbar (1940)

Another important task for the women, who volunteered their services, was to organise knitting “gatherings” at which the women would make blankets and comforters which could be sent to the troops. In her 1940 work entitled, A Knitting Party we see one such gathering. The setting is the drawing room of the Dunbar family home in Rochester, Kent, and it depicts some fifteen women, one of whom is Evelyn’s mother, Florence.

Portrait of Flying Officer Roger Folley in Flying Kit by Evelyn Dunbar

Whilst working for the War Artists’ Advisory Committee she encountered Roger Folley, who came from Lancashire and who had graduated from Leeds University. Roger was an “outdoor person” and spent his holidays and time after university working on farms and enjoying life outdoors hiking around the countryside. Having gained some experience working on farms combined with his two university degrees (B.Sc and B.Comm.) it qualified him to work as an agricultural economist and his first job was as Costing Officer at Sparsholt Farm Institute, near Winchester, where he first met Evelyn who had been posted there in 1940 to paint Women’s Land Army recruits at work.

Winter Garden by Evelyn Dunbar (1929-37)

Roger was a Royal Auxiliary Air Force volunteer and at the outbreak of war, was called up to serve in the RAF. He received his Flying Officer commission in 1941 and transferred from the Voluntary Reserve and became Flight Lieutenant Roger Folley RAF, serving as a navigator with 488 (NZ) Squadron. Friendship between Evelyn and Roger blossomed into love and the couple were engaged in February 1942 and married the following August

Pastoral, Land Girls Pruning at East Malling by Evelyn Dunbar (1944)

One of Evelyn’s and Roger’s great mutual loves was their commitment to the land and the careful management of its productivity. For Evelyn this premise was in line with her Christian Science beliefs which she continued to follow. She believed in the texts of the Old Testament that talked about a covenant between God and encompassed a covenant, frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, between God the Creator and mankind whereby the creator guaranteed the means of subsistence to mankind in return for mankind’s undertaking to cherish the land with love, intelligence and industry.

Potato Sorting, Berwick by Evelyn Dunbar

Evelyn often followed her husband when he was transferred to another military base and once he was stationed at RAF Charter Hall in Berwick. Whilst staying at the Scottish Borders, Evelyn made a sketch of women from the Women’s Land Army sorting newly dug-up potatoes.

Sprout Picking by Evelyn Dunbar

Much of the Land Girls’ work on the farm was back-breaking as can be seen by Evelyn’s painting entitled Sprout Picking.

Singling Turnips by Evelyn Dunbar

Turnip seeds are minute and they are scattered in ridges by seed-drill. However a few weeks after the seeds have been “mechanically” sowed, the seedlings will shoot up in their masses along with a profusion of weeds. To avoid the turnip shoots being choked by the weeds they have to be thinned out by hand and re-planted, known as “singling” – hence the title of the painting.

A Land Girl and the Bail Bull by Evelyn Dunbar (1945)

One of the last paintings Evelyn completed for the War Artists’ Advisory Committee, depicting the Land Girls was entitled A Land Girl and the Bail Bull. It is a depiction of a Land Girl’s work with an outdoor dairy herd on the Hampshire Downs. The name “bail” in the painting’s title refers to the moveable shed, which can be seen in the centre of the middle-ground and is where the milking is done. The girl has to catch and tether the bull and we see her enticing the animal with a bucket of fodder whilst she hides the chain behind her, ready to snap on to the ring in its nose as soon as it is within her reach. The girl in the painting is modelled by Evelyn’s sister, Jessie .

Once the Second World War had ended Evelyn and her husband went to live in Long Compton, Warwickshire, and they remained there for fifteen months. In 1946 The Oxford School of Art welcomed Evelyn as a part-time tutor and she combined this with her role as a visiting teacher at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. Having these two teaching posts in Oxford and with her husband, Roger Folley, obtaining a position in the nearby University Agricultural Economics Research Institute, the couple decided to move home from Long Compton and re-locate to Enstone, Oxfordshire, in the spring of 1947. They made the Manor House at Enstone their home for next three years. In 1948, whilst living at Enstone, Evelyn completed a portrait of her thirty-five year-old husband Roger, entitled The Cerebrant. The setting for the work was his study on the top floor of The Manor House. It is a peaceful and relaxed portrait of her husband. He is depicted sitting down at a small table, which has various coloured books on it. One of the books is open and he is holding one of the pages in his right hand. He is looking towards his right, which is the direction the light is coming from. Folley is dressed casually in a green, short-sleeved, collared shirt. The painting was given that title by Roger Folley some fifty-seven years later when he presented it to Manchester Art Gallery in 2005. He had told one of his wife’s biographers that It was a celebration of Thinking.

Bailing Hay by Evelyn Dunbar (1943)

Roger Folley changed jobs in 1950 when he was appointed to the Department of Economics at Wye College, Kent. The new position meant Folley and Eveleyn had to move home and they leased an isolated house, The Elms, four miles from the Kent village of Wye, nestled in the hills of the Kent Downs. Dunbar would run informal art classes but still managed to travel once a year to Oxford to give an annual lecture at the Ruskin School. In 1953 a solo exhibition of her paintings was held at Withersdane Hall on the Wye campus.

Women’s Land Army Hostel by Evelyn Dunbar

Roger Folley was away in the Caribbean working for the government whilst Evelyn remained at The Elms. However their lease on the property was coming to an end and she had to organise a new home for her and her husband. Evelyn chose a more modern property in the village of Wye, which had once been a vicarage. She named it Tan House. It did not prove a good move and the couple were never happy there. It was smaller than they were used to and did not have a studio space for Evelyn. In 1958 Roger and Evelyn, could no longer endure the limitations of Tan House and moved to a farmhouse called Staple Farm, close to the village of Etchinghill, on the North Downs and in this home Evelyn had her own studio.

August and the Poet by Evelyn Dunbar (1960)

On the evening of May 12th 1960, whilst out walking in the woods around Staple Farm, Dunbar suddenly collapsed and died. One of Evelyn’s last paintings was Autumn and the Poet which she had started to paint ten years earlier and was still on one of her easels when she died. The figure of the poet, half-seated on the ground, was modelled by her husband. Unfortunately the painting was slightly smoke-damaged in a house fire in 2004, but was restored in time for the 2006 exhibition marking the centenary of Dunbar’s birth.

Roadworks by Evelyn Dunbar (Thought to have been produced while studying at Rochester School of Art in c.1926) sold in 2018 for £19,000.

Her main works were her oil paintings but she also left behind many portfolios of watercolours, drawings, pastels, sketches and other secondary work, most of which were not seen for many years after disappearing shortly after her death. The Times newspaper in its obituary of Evelyn Dunbar wrote:

“…Living a retired life in Kent, absorbed in country pursuits, Miss Dunbar did not often come before the public in mixed exhibitions, but her mural paintings and illustrations, with their peculiar authenticity of work inspired by the ruling passion, appealed strongly to those who knew it…”

Roger Folley remarried in 1961, and Evelyn’s works of art were distributed among family and friends.

I have only scratched the surface of Evelyn Dunbar’s life and the majority of the information was gleaned from a beautifully written series of blogs regarding this wonderful artist written by her nephew, Christopher Campbell-Howes, who has also published a book on her life an art work.