Category: Female artists

Theresa Bernstein. Part 2.

William Merowitz in his studio.

John Weichsel was the founder of the People’s Art Guild in 1915.  It was to be an alternative to the system of traditional fine art galleries. The Guild would set up exhibitions in various unconventional spaces and by doing so, the Guild brought avant-garde art into the immigrant settlement houses and tenements of the Lower East Side with the goal of exposing a new set of people to modern art and at the same time, providing artists with direct contact to new markets. One of the helpers at the Guild was William Meyerowitz.

Theresa and William’s Wedding Photograph (1919)

Meyerowitz called on Theresa at her studio and asked if she could offer some of her paintings for a benefit show with the Guild.  From this initial meeting a friendship developed which blossomed into romance and finally on February 7th 1919 the couple married in Philadelphia.

The Studio (54th West 74th Street) by William Meyerowitz (1935)

William Meyerowtiz was born in Ekaterinoslav, now Dnipro in Eastern Ukraine, on July 15, 1887.   He and his father had immigrated to New York City in 1908, and they settled in the Lower East Side. William studied etching at the National Academy of Design and was also a talented singer and while he was a student he sang in the chorus of the Metropolitan Opera. Later, he rented a studio in the same building as the 291 gallery run by Alfred Stieglitz.

Portrait of the Artist by Theresa Bernstein (1920)

Their marriage took an early blow when their baby daughter died of pneumonia. and from that tragedy, they remained childless. Despite this tragic occurrence the couple lived a happy and contented life. In her 1986 biography of her husband, William Meyerowitz, The Artist Speaks. Theresa Bernstein Meyerowitz wrote:

“…In the Autumn evenings, we used to take a little table from the studio and place it in front of the fireplace. William would split some logs and light the fire. … We would have cozy conversations about our work, our friends, ourselves and they were precious evenings we spent together. We never tired of each other’s company. . . . From the day we met, our life was one absorbing conversation...”

The Immigrants by Theresa Bernstein (1923)

In 1891, Theresa Bernstein had been an immigrant entering America with her mother and father when she was just one-year-old. Thirty-two years later she completed a painting entitled The Immigrants, depicting the deck of the Cunard liner, Aquitania and the plight of immigrants heading for the “promised land”.  The centre point of this depiction is a young mother and her baby and maybe Theresa wanted, through this painting, to recall what it would have been like for her mother making that sea passage across the Atlantic.  The young woman is surrounded by her fellow immigrants.  She seems to be lost in her thoughts.  What are her thoughts?  Behind her right shoulder is a young man hovering nearby.  Could she be thinking of a new relationship, a new romance?  Behind her left shoulder is a group of children with their mother.  Maybe the young woman daydreaming about a happy family life with numerous children.  This is a depiction which directs our thoughts on the vulnerability, change and challenge which affect this young woman but at the same time offers a glimmer of hope with regards her possible new beginning.

The Milliners by Theresa Bernstein (1921)

Bernstein’s 1921 painting entitled The Milliners is typical of many of her figurative works depicting a large group of people.  Look back at some of her multi-figured paintings: the job-seekers in a crowded waiting room (Waiting Room – Employment Office), people crowded into a train on the elevated railway (In the Elevated), and many others depicting beach scenes at Coney Island or audiences at the music hall or theatre.   Theresa was Jewish and although this 1918 painting, The Milliners, could not be termed Jewish, it was personal to Theresa as her sister-in-law worked in the millinery industry, a typical “vocation” that was both immigrant and Jewish. 

View through window (The Milliners)

In the painting we see a group of female workers, engaged in the fastidious and creative labour of creating hats. It depicts six women gathered around a table which is brimming with accessories.  The depiction is a close-up of the women and this view emphasizes the cramped nature of the space that the women are working in but it also offers us a close look at their individual features.  The setting is probably a room in a city tenement apartment.  If you look carefully at the upper left, you can just make out a window, windowsill and through this space we can just make out the metal fire escape which was common in this type of building.

Mother and Mother-in-law

This is also a depiction of Theresa’s beloved family.  Theresa’s mother is the woman we see depicted at the upper left of the group, with greying hair, talking to Theresa’s mother-in-law, whose hands hide the delicate threads she is working with, head bowed as if in prayer. On either side of the mothers are two of Theresa Bernstein’s sisters-in-law, Bessie and Sophie, who was actually  a milliner herself. One of them, dressed in black, has placed a newly made black hat on her head and is admiringly viewing the result in a hand-held mirror.  Her sister, dressed in bright yellow, watches as her sibling vainly gazes lovingly at her reflection.  She holds a black hat which has two large flame-like yellow feathers attached to it.  In the lower right of the group, diametrically opposite her mother, is Minna, Theresa’s third sister-in-law, dressed in a white dress and they are testament to two generations of milliners.  The final member of this working group of women sitting on the far right, dressed in green, is Katie.  She is the only one to be looking out us.  Maybe she is silently inviting us into this intimate circle.  Katie was the family housekeeper and Theresa’s much-loved confidante.

Katie by Theresa Bernstein (1917)

Katie, the Bernstein’s housekeeper was the subject of Theresa’s portrait in 1917. Although Theresa thought of her as a friend and part of the family. For Katie, her role in the Bernstein household was somewhere between an employee and a sister to Theresa.  Bernstein did not choose sitters for their glamour or their social status, her choice of subjects was based upon people she liked.  In this portrait which uses earth tones we see Katie wearing a heavy shabby coat.  She is pinching the lapels tightly together.  On her head is a hat, with the haloed brim positioned at a jaunty angle allowing the feathers, attached to it, to cascade downwards.

Woman with a Parrot by Theresa Bernstein (c.1917)

Elsa Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven the German-born avant-garde visual artist and poet, who was active in Greenwich Village, New York, from 1913 to 1923, where her radical self-displays came to embody a living Dada. She was considered one of the most controversial and radical women artists of the era.  Theresa Bernstein painted several striking portraits of this Dada artist, poet, model, and muse, whom she befriended in New York’s Greenwich Village. Was it the sitter’s uncompromising attitude to life which attracted Bernstein for she too was equally radical in her own time, as she established her own path as a Jewish immigrant and a female artist in the male-dominated art market.  In this painting entitled Woman with a Parrot which she completed around 1917, we see the baroness gracefully poised against a plain background; her back is partially exposed, and she holds a red parrot.

The Cribbage Players by Theresa Bernstein (1927)

The New York Society of Women Artists (NYSWA) was founded in 1925 and devoted itself to avant-garde women artists.  Theresa Bernstein was one of the earliest members and and took part in this and other women artists’ groups throughout her career.  Theresa was acutely sensitive to the discrimination against her within the profession because she was a woman and for that reason, she would often use only her first initial when exhibiting, especially at the National Academy of Design. She was both disillusioned and disappointed with never having been nominated to the Academy. She would often amusingly recount an anecdote about the male artistic preserve, the Salmagundi Club of New York City. (It only began to admit women in the 1970s.) Her story goes that a delegation from the club visited her studio at one point in search of a Mr. Bernstein. At first Theresa believed that they were looking for her father. After some amusing banter, it soon became apparent that they wished to offer “Mr. Bernstein” a membership in the club and they stalked off in a mood when they found out that the painter of the canvases, they so admired, was in fact Theresa Bernstein.

Metropolitan Opera by Theresa Bernstein (1924)

Metropolitan Opera by Theresa Bernstein

Toscanini at Carnegie Hall (1930)

Two subjects that fascinated Theresa Bernstein and were often depicted in her works of art were her love of music which she had got from her husband and the depiction of crowds and both these elements can be seen in her depiction of musical events at the Metropolitan Opera House and Carnegie Hall,

The Music Lover by Theresa Bernstein (1913)

Theresa Bernstein died at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan on February 12th 2002, sixteen days before her 112th birthday, although it is thought she may have been older, but she had never been forthcoming regarding her birthdate!  Her husband William Meyerowitz had dies in 1981.  She will always be remembered as one of the first to paint in the Realist style.

Music Lovers by Theresa Bernstein (1934)

I will leave the last words on this wonderful artist to Patricia M Burnham, lecturer in American studies and art history at the University of Texas, who wrote an article about Theresa Bernstein in the Woman’s Art Journal, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Autumn, 1988 – Winter, 1989).  She wrote:

“…Her work has not gone unrecognized. Each decade of her 80-year career has been marked by gallery representation and one-woman shows. Her early work especially generated considerable excitement among reviewers and critics.  But she has never gained the national reputation one might have expected nor are her works to be found in a large number of major art museums.  Happily, Theresa Bernstein is now being rediscovered.  Along with many other women artists, she has been a beneficiary of the women’s movement and feminist art scholarship.20 Art historians taking another look at early-20th-century American art are beginning to recognize her achievements.   Yet to come is a full evaluation of her work that will reveal the weaknesses among the strengths, the particulars among the universals, the womanly among the human and ultimately provide a meaningful synthesis worthy of its subject…”

Theresa Bernstein. Part 1.

The Early Years

Theresa Bernstein (1890 -2002)

My blog today is all about a remarkable woman, not just for her art but for her amazing longevity, dying just a few months short of her 112th birthday. She is the American painter, Theresa Ferber Bernstein. 

Two miniature cameos (possibly self-portraits) by Theresa Bernstein (1907)

Theresa was born on March 1st 1890 in Krakow, a city in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now Poland.  She was the only child of Isidore Bernstein and Anne Bernstein (née Ferber).  Her father was a Jewish textile merchant and her mother was a woman of Central European culture and learning who was a talented pianist.  In 1891 when Theresa was one year old the family left Krakow and emigrated to America and Philadelphia became Theresa’s first home.

Polish Church, Easter Morning by Theresa Bernstein (1916)

As a young child, Theresa loved to draw and paint and later, whilst at high school, received some art training.  Bernstein graduated from the William D. Kelley School in Philadelphia in June 1907, at the age of 17. That same year, with her drawing of sprouting onions viewed through a green glass planter, she won a Board of Education scholarship to the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, now the Moore College of Art & Design,where she enrolled in the four-year Normal Art Course for training teachers. It was here that she studied under Elliott Daingerfield, Daniel Garber, Harriet Sartain, Henry B. Snell, and Samuel Murray. Her interest in art grew as she got older and she would attend some lectures at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. 

Daniel Garber’s Studio by Theresa Bernstein (1910)

Whilst studying at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women Theresa produced a painting 1n 1910 entitled Daniel Garber’s Studio which is a pictorial memory of her time there.

Dance Hall by Theresa Bernstein (1911)

The students would be taken on painting trips by their tutors and one such outing with William Daingerfield in 1911 was a summer stay at Blowing Rock, North Carolina, where she painted the first of her jazz-inspired works, entitled Dance Hall.

Kindergarten Class by Theresa Bernstein (1914)

She graduated from the Philadelphia School of Design for Women in 1911.  Theresa’s father’s business in Philadelphia had run into difficulties and so he along with his wife and daughter left the city and went to live in New York and that October Theresa began taking life and portraiture classes with William Merritt Chase at the Art Students League.  Besides her art education Theresa travelled on two occasions with her mother to Europe, where they visited relatives and visited a number of art galleries.  She greatly admired the work of the European Expressionist artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, and Edvard Munch.

Colored Church, North Carolina by Theresa Bernstein (1911)

When back in New York, Theresa visited the Manhattan gallery of Alfred Stieglitz, the 291 Gallery, and in 1913 she attended the Armory Show which was organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors. Here she was able to view works by European modernists.  She had mixed feelings about what she saw and later stated that she couldn’t warm up to cubes and triangles—they didn’t have enough life force.

The Little Merry-go-Round by Theresa Bernstein (1913)

However, in 1913, a breakthrough occurred for Theresa when the National Academy of Design chose her painting, Open-Air Show for its annual exhibition. The work then went on to the Carnegie Institute and the Art Institute of Chicago, where it attracted the attention of English collector John Lane, who purchased it and became an enthusiastic supporter of Theresa.

At the Movies by Theresa Bernstein (1913)

The American edition of the English magazine The Studio: An Illustrated Magazine of Fine and Applied Art, was titled The International Studio. It had its own editorial staff, and the content was different from that of the English edition, although many articles from it were reprinted. It was published in New York by John Lane & Company.  W. H. de B. Nelson, an intriguing figure in the early 20th-century American art scene, wrote in The International Studio praising Theresa Bernstein for her independence of her direction with regards to her art stating that it was an uncompromising offerings of this ambitious girl, commending her choice of subject matter–“democratic parks, unfashionable chapels, the five-cent subway.” He finished by saying that she was a woman painter who paints like a man. he was delighted by his comments.

Searchlights on the Hudson by Theresa Bernstein (1915)

One of her paintings exhibited at the Milch Galleries was Searchlights on the Hudson which she had completed in 1915.  Theresa had remembered seeing the unusual and spectacular sight of the Hudson River being illuminated by searchlights as a method of detection of enemy boats and dirigibles.

Waiting Room- Employment Office by Theresa Bernstein (1917)

Theresa, from an early age, was very observant.  She could leave a room and once outside accurately describe what had been inside and could even sketch what she had seen.  This excellent memory was of great help to her when she completed a painting in 1917 entitled Waiting Room – Employment Office.   Four years earlier, when she was thirteen years old, she had accompanied her mother to the employment office, where she was going to select a housemaid, Theresa remembered what the room in the office looked like and all the people waiting patiently to secure work.   It is an emotive recollection of that visit.

Street Workers by Theresa Bernstein (1915)

The Ashcan School was an informal art group that operated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and included great artists such as Robert Henri, John Sloan, William James Glackens, George Luks, Everett Shinn, George Bellows, Jerome Myers.   This group was known for its works in the style of urban realism, which produced depictions of urban life of the lower-class New Yorkers, warts and all.  Although Theresa was never a formal member of the Ashcan School, she shared with it an enthusiasm for “modern” subject matter, to which she added a profoundly meaningful take on the way she saw her subjects.

In the Elevated by Theresa Bernstein (1916)

She embraced urbanism and popular culture with great passion.  Her depictions of urban life were varied and encompassed the like of  the cinema, trolley buses and the elevated trains, and places where the lower and lower-middle classes would congregate in the summer such as Coney Island. Her 1916 painting entitled In the Elevated depicts a passenger car on the Ninth Avenue Elevated railway, which Bernstein took between her parents’ apartment on West 94th Street and her studio on West 55th Street. This work by Bernstein encapsulates the experience of modern city folk who are placed in close physical proximity and yet remain psychologically isolated from one another.

Third Class Carriage by Honoré Daumier (1858)

The work reminds me of one of my favourite paintings by Honoré Daumier’s entitled Third Class Carriage which he completed around 1858.

The Readers by Theresa Bernstein (1914)

The New York Public Library was built on Fifth Avenue, between 70th and 71st Streets, in 1877 to much funfare and excitement and the first book was borrowed within ten minutes of the grand opening.  One of the regular visitors to this great institution was Theresa Bernstein who spent many happy hours there.  Whilst in the library she not only read the many books on offer but took the time to secretly sketch on scraps of paper and backs of envelopes the gesticulations and expressions of those around her.  It got to the point that she became such a frequent visitor and loved everything about it that she referred to it in her memoir as her “alma mater.”

Theresa’s 1914 painting The Readers, depicts the reading room of this newly opened library. We see five men seated on all sides of a banquette, in a pyramid shape at the centre of the composition. Their faces are softly lit by the glow of the reading lamp. It is fascinating to see that each of them has staked out the best spot in the reading room and settled in for the day.  The three men facing us seem very content and totally absorbed with their books. 

Graphite on paper study for The Readers by Theresa Bernstein (1914)

What is fascinating about this painting is the change of heart Theresa must have had between making the preliminary sketch for the work and how it finished up.  Theresa had a major change of heart as to the people present, as in the sketch one of the figures seated on the banquette, on the right, was a woman in a feathered hat. But in the painting, Bernstein replaced her with a man.  In the finished painting the only woman depicted is one who stands in the middle background, plainly dressed and deep in thought, her hand resting on her chin as she studies her book. It is possible that placing the solitary woman in the background of the painting, Bernstein may have been providing a symbolic commentary on gender inequality.   The Central Library was one of the few public places where women were able to sit uninterrupted and in comfort for hours, whilst delving into the world of books.

William Meyerowitz

Theresa’s life changed in 1917 when William Meyerowitz knocked on the door of her studio…………………………………………….

to be continued.

Anna Richards Brewster. Part 1. 

The Early Years

Anna Richards (c.1885)

My featured artist today is Anna Richards Brewster, the much-admired American Impressionist painter who was one of the most successful women artists of her time and yet her name has largely been forgotten. Anna was born in the Germantown neighbourhood of Philadelphia in 1870. She was the sixth of eight children of William and Anna Richards.

William Trost Richards 

Her father was William Trost Richards, the American landscape artist, who was associated with both the Hudson River School and the American Pre-Raphaelite movement. After living most of his life in Pennsylvania, William Trost Richards rented a summer home in Newport, Rhode Island, and later built a summer home, Gray Cliff, on Conanicut Island in 1881, so as to be closer to the ocean. Richards was recognized by his colleagues as one of America’s foremost marine painters.

A Rocky Coast by William Trost Richards (1877)

Anna’s mother was Anna Matlack Richards, an intellectual Quaker from a prominent Philadelphia family. She was a children’s author, poet and translator best known for her fantasy novel, A New Alice in the Old Wonderland. Anna Matlack and William Richards married in 1856.

The 2009 edition of Anna Matlack Brewster’s book, A New Alice in the Old Wonderland.

Anna Matlack, as a young woman published fictional works, plays, and poems, including a fictional autobiography by “Mrs. A. M. Richards” with the title Memories of a Grandmother in 1854.  After she married William Trost Richards they spent many years travelling abroad.  In the 1890s, she published comic poems for children in the popular children’s magazines Harper’s Young People and The St. Nicholas Magazine. The success of these comics led her to publish A New Alice in the Old Wonderland in 1895, which featured illustrations by her daughter Anna. It is recognised as one of the more important “Alice imitations”, or novels inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice books.

Landscape with a Canal by Anna Richards Brewster (1887)

Anna Matlack Richards educated their children at home to a pre-college level in the arts and sciences and her son-in-law later wrote about his wife and siblings gaining knowledge from their mother’s teachings:

“… Besides the usual subjects, all of them knew something about art, literature and music; each played a musical instrument; and each was encouraged to follow some special interest and to understand and to care for excellence…”

Mentome France by Anna Richards Brewster

Between 1878 and 1880, the family lived in England, mainly in Cornwall and London, and for a short time in Paris, where Anna’s father found subjects for his painting and Anna would often accompany her father during his painting trips. Having returned to America, the family lived in Boston from 1884 to 1888 so that their son, Theodore, was able to attend Harvard University.

Country House near Exeter, England by Anna Richards Brewster

At the age of fourteen Anna exhibited at the National Academy of Design.  Now living with her family in Boston, she studied with Dennis Miller Bunker at the Cowles Art School where he was the chief instructor of figure and cast drawing, artistic anatomy, and composition. In 1888 the school awarded her the first scholarship in Ladies Life classes.

Langdale Pikes by Anna Richards Brewster (1905)

From there, in 1890, Anna left Boston and went to New York to study at the Art Students League for a few months each winter beginning in 1889 and these annual trips continued until early 1894. Here she was tutored by William Merritt Chase, Henry Siddons Mowbray and John La Farge.  In 1889 she won the Dodge Prize, worth $300, awarded by the National Academy for the best picture painted by an American woman of any age. The winning painting was entitled An Interlude to Chopin.

Near Williamstown Ma. by Anna Richards Brewster

Whilst in New York, she rented a room at Mrs. Jacobs’s boarding house, and it was here that one day she met Annie Ware Winsor, who taught at the Brearley School, a private school for girls in New York City. Winsor was five years older than Anna but they became life-long friends and intellectual soulmates. Annie Winsor, through her family’s connections, was able to inroduce Anna to many important and prominent families, such as the Vanderbilts and Schuylers.

Moulin Huet, Guernsey by Anna Richards Brewster

Annie and Anna both became members of the Social Reform Club, an organization for improving the conditions of the poor, and the Louisa May Alcott Literary Circle, where they read books and poetry. This allowed Anna to break away from the insular life of living with her family and the lack of any social interaction when living at home.

Portrait of the Artist’s Father by Anna Richards Brewster

Between 1890 and 1895, Anna once again went to Europe with her father and, like him, she managed to capture what she saw on canvas and in numerous sketch books.  They travelled to various places in England, Ireland, Scotland and the Channel Islands.  She even went to Paris where she studied at the Académie Julian with the French painters, Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens.  Whilst at the family home in Boston she would receive private art lessons from LaFarge who was a friend of the family.  She recounted in a letter to her friend Annie Winsor one such session:

“…The whole afternoon I was wrapped in the pleasure of admiration for Mr. LaFarge. Father and I agree that no mortal could have acted with more perfect courtesy, quietness and charm. I am very glad he came, though it wasn’t much of a lesson…”

Clovelly by Anna Richards Brewster

Anna was now in her early twenties and both her parents who had been backing her financially began to wonder when she would become a professional painter and earn her own living and they began to pressurise her.   She had always had a difficult relationship with her father and mother.  She was much closer to her father.  Her father had been giving her lessons in art from an early age and had to critique her work which often led to many heated arguments.  Anna would also have heated discussions with her mother who was both a serious scholar and a formidable woman.  Her mother described Anna as “an uneasy household presence” and was tiring of her lack of future plans.  In a letter Anna wrote to her friend Annie Winsor in September 1893 in which she recounted the words of her mother:

“…Mother said that if I was good for anything I should never have a pencil out of my hand, (that I should draw everything, anything) and think of nothing else.  That I ought to read nothing, think nothing, write nothing…..Most people don’t have the physical strength or mental strength to concentrate themselves…….no other thing can attain perfection and perfection is the only thing that exists nothing else counts.  I reject that doctrine but nevertheless it is not without effect but I don’t believe, won’t believe that to be a painter one must be a fanatic…”

Clovelly Village, England by Anna Richards Brewster (1895)

Anna had some exhibiting success during the early 1890s.  She had exhibited and sold four of her paintings at the National Academy of Design in New York and in 1895 she illustrated two books for JD Lippinott, a family friend, who owned his own publication business. A decision was made in 1895 between twenty-five-year-old Anna and her parents.  It was time for her to leave home and make a life for herself as an artist.  She had made a number of trips to England with her father and he believed that it was there that his daughter could make a name for herself and make a living from her art.  It was decided that she should head for the small, picturesque Devon coastal village of Clovelly.

Devonshire Farm House by Anna Richards Brewster

Anna remained in Clovelly for a year and then in 1896 moved to London where she and her parents agreed it would be an ideal place to show and sell her work.  In 1896 she rented a studio and an apartment in Chelsea, where she lived for the next nine years. Whilst living in the English capital she sold a number of her paintings and exhibited four times at the Royal Academy. Thirteen of her paintings featuring life at Clovelly were even exhibited in Baltimore, Maryland.  Her works were also shown at the National Academy of Design and at Knoedler Gallery in New York; and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.  In England her work was on show at the Royal Society of Artists, in Birmingham and three times at the Royal Miniature Society.

Battersea Bridge at Twilight by Anna Richards Brewster

On an earlier trip to London, Anna’s parents had become friends with an elderly couple, Mary and Henry Kemp-Welch, who were leading lights in the London art world and Mrs. Kemp-Welch became Anna’s patron and introduced her to many socially prominent families and from these introductions Anna received some portrait commissions.

A Summer Morning in London by Anna Richards Brewster

Anna’s living expenses had been met by her father whose financial situation had been sound due to the sale of his own paintings.  He had also financially helped his other children.  Anna must have been very conscious and somewhat felt guilty, about relying on her  father for money and this is borne out in letter she wrote to her friend, Annie Winsor on August 28th 1900:

“…Money is the one thing I feel I have no control over whatsoever, and whose workings, bearings, laws, and significance I do not understand…”

And in another letter to Annie on November 29th 1900, she wrote:

“…My mind’s much occupied with the question of making money. I must … I shall never get any feeling of self-respect until I can support myself…”

Trafalgar Square London by Anna Richards Brewster

In 1900, Anna’s patron and friend Mrs Kemp Welch, now in old age, had become frail and she was advised by her doctors to leave England during the cold damp winter months and move to a warmer climate.  Anna had a lot to be thankful for the elderly lady’s support and so offered to accompany her to Italy as her chaperone.  She had a lot to do before she could leave London and one can tell the pressure she was under as one notes a letter she sent to Annie Winsor prior to her departure.  She wrote:

“…Next Tuesday, Mrs. K-W (who is far from well) and I start for Italy for her health; and before then I have to rent my flat . . . finish my academy pictures, ditto a portrait, ditto some work for Mr. Holiday [a stained-glass artist], give my five pupils their last lessons…”

Italian Gardens at Mount Vesuvius by Anna Richards Brewster

Anna and Mrs Kemp Welch did get to travel to Italy in December 1900.  That month had been a sad period for Anna as she received news of her mother’s death, aged 66.  It had not been altogether a shock to Anna as her mother had been diagnosed as having breast cancer two years earlier and she was later diagnosed as being terminally ill.  Anna’s mother was adamant that her daughter remained in England and not come back to America.  She had visited her daughter in London in October 1900, two months before her death.  On December 22nd 1900 Anne wrote to her friend Annie Wintor telling her about that last meeting she had with her mother:

“…Yes, it is a great happiness that – just lately, she and I got a restful feeling of mental understanding, more than ever before….I got to say what I had been longing to – that whatever happened I could always feel that now we understand each other, and that all misconceptions were past……She grew so much in those years from the moment when she learned of her mortal malady, and met the knowledge with all the bigness of her soul…. I felt nearer to her than I ever had.  She has grown more human and beautiful to the end…”

……….to be continued.

Some of the information was gleaned from the usual search engines but most came from a 2008 book entitled Anna Richards Brewster, American Impressionist which was a collection of essays edited by Judith Kafka Maxwell with contributions from Wanda Corn, Leigh Culver, Judith Kafka Maxwell, Susan Brewster McClatchy and Kirsten Swinth.

Laura Sylvia Gosse

Laura Sylvia Gosse (1881-1968)

For a number of years now, probably for centuries, many female artists have been discounted as hobby-painters or painting because art for many was like playing the piano, a social grace that every young woman should achieve.  It is even more annoying when a man and a woman work side by side and yet it is the reputation of the male artist that is remembered.  An example of this is looking at two Camden Town Group artists, one a founder, the other on the periphary as it was an all-male domain.  I am sure you have heard of Walter Sickert but what about his friend and contemporary, Laura Sylvia Gosse.  Sylvia who ?  Let me set the record straight.

The Artist’s Mother by Laura Sylvia Gosse

Sylvia Gosse was actually born Laura Sylvia Gosse but was always known by her Christian name, Sylvia.  She was born in London on February 14th 1881, the youngest of three children.  She had an elder sister, Teresa Emily and an elder brother, Philip Henry.  

Edmund Gosse by John Singer Sargent

Her father, Edmund Gosse was a poet, literary critic and librarian of the House of Lords.  Her mother was Ellen Gosse (née Epps), an artist in the Pre-Raphaelite circle who had studied under Ford Madox Brown, and whose sister, Laura Theresa, an aspiring artist, had married Lawrence Alma-Tadema.

Fountains at Pernes Les Fountaines, Provence by Laura Sylvia Gosse

Sylvia’s family home in Delamere Terrace was in the London borough of Paddington, and was always inundated with people from both the art and literary world with visitors such as the great writers of the time, such as Henry James, Thomas Hardy, Robert Louis Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling.  In early childhood, Sylvia loved to paint and draw and her favourite subject being her pets. At the age of thirteen, Gosse went to an art school in France, where she stayed for three years and she recounted that it was there that she felt she belonged.  She returned to England and studied at the St John’s Wood School of Art.  In 1906, aged fifteen, she enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools.

The Gossip by Laura Sylvia Gosse

One of the frequent visitors at the Grosse household was the artist Walter Sickert and it was during one of his visits that he began talking to Sylvia and looked at her artwork.  He was captivated by her work and obvious artistic talent and suggested she learn the art of etching.  Sylvia began to attend Sickert’s evening classes at the Westminster School of Art and in 1909 went as a pupil to his new art school, which he ran with Madeline Knox at 209 Hampstead Road, London.  Sickert’s dual role with Knox at the art school ended when Knox resigned following Sickert’s illness, and having had to run the school singlehandedly.  Sickert approached Sylvia Gosse, his pupil, to see if she would accept the position as associate director. 

Rowlandson House – Sunset by Walter Sickert (1911)

Walter Sickert rented Rowlandson House in Camden Town from 1910–14, during his time with the Camden Town Group. This summertime depiction of the building looks north up Hampstead Road from the back garden, the time of day nearing twilight, which Sickert has indicated by daubs of pink and mauve in the pale sky. The trees in the far background form the edge of Mornington Crescent Gardens. 

Walter Sickert by Sylvia Gosse (1923-25)

Sylvia was made co-director of the Rowlandson House School but did this position alongside Sickert put them on an equal footing?  As a woman in an artistic world which did not always value them, it became clear during her time at Rowlandson House, that her relationship with the Camden Town Group which she was ineligible to join, being a female, despite Sickert being its leader, was not even-handed.  According to Kathleen Fisher, Gosse’s biographer and friend, who wrote Conversations with Sylvia. Sylvia Gosse – Painter, 1881-1968, Sylvia Gosse taught the less-able students at Rowlandson House, as Sickert would grow bored and impatient and dismiss them. The School became known as the Sickert and Gosse School of Painting and Etching.  Silvia served as co-principal from 1910 until it closed in 1914 and during that period, she taught some of the classes and took over responsibility for the practical organisation and finances.  Sylvia Gosse had an independent income, and without her financial backing the school would have closed much sooner.

The school which Gosse and Sickert jointly ran until 1914 when it closed. During those years, Gosse’s own painting career also began to progress. Sylvia Gosse could be described as being slightly introverted (or was she just shy?) and was not known as a very sociable person.  One of her pupils, Marjorie Lilly recalled Sylvia, saying:

“…she might appear at Number 15 [Fitzroy Street] on At Home days, but rarely; being very shy, she always chose the most inconspicuous corner she could find, looking harassed and hunted, and hardly spoke…”

Despite this she was always very supportive of her fellow artists and completely dedicated to Sickert.

Chateau Dieppe by Layra Sylvia Gosse (c.1925)

La Place Saint Jacques by Laura Sylvia Gosse (c.1920)

Grande patisserie, Place Nationale, Dieppe, France by Laura Sylvia Gosse (1930)

Walter Sickert had always loved visiting France and would regularly travel to the Normandy coastal town of Dieppe.  Sylvia often accompanied Sickert on his travels, notably when he stayed in Dieppe, and she had a small cottage near his home.  Many of her paintings featured the French town.

Envermeu, France by Laura Sylvia Gosse (c.1920s)

The small town of Envermeu which lies ten kilometres east of Dieppe also featured in many of Sylvia’s paintings.

The Seamstress by Laura Sylvia Gosse

Many of the paintings of the Camden Town group focused on the subject of ordinary life, which often concentrated on the life of the poor and dispossessed, and how their life was one of boredom and squalor.  Gosse tended to focus more on the hard-working women, such as the seamstress and the printer.

The Printer by Laura Sylvia Gosse (c.1915)

Sylvia’s painting, The Printer, which she completed around 1915 shows a woman labouring at a press.

The Nurse by Laura Sylvia Gosse

In her painting, The Nurse, we see her approaching her patient.  In this depiction, we see her as she is reflected in a mirror above the sickbed.  This is not a depiction that beautifies the nursing profession it is simply one that shows us an unglamorous workaday appearance of a nurse tending the sick.

Mrs Alexandra Russell by Laura Sylvia Gosse

During the 1920s and 1930s Sylvia’s paintings were on display at many of best-known commercial galleries. She was elected to the Royal Society of British Artists in 1930 and continued to support Sickert loyally until his death in 1942.

In 1951 Sylvia bought a bungalow in Ore, a large village in the urban area of Hastings, in the county of East Sussex.  It was here that she planned to spend her last days painting, but alas, she suffered from cataracts, which made painting and sketching increasingly problematic.  However, it was her belief that every painter should die with a brush in their hand, so despite her severely reduced vision, she still managed to visit exhibitions and help inspire young artists. She died in the Buchanan Hospital, Hastings on June 6th 1968 at the age of 87.

Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley

Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley, Self Portrait (1897)

The artist I am featuring today is the American painter and watercolourist Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley.  She was born on July 13th 1860 in the small coastal town of Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Her father, Peter Radcliffe Hawley was an officer in the coast guard and her mother, Isabella Hawley (née Merritt), a Canadian-born dancer. Wilhelmina’s ancestors were English and Scottish migrants, who moved to the east coast of the United States and Canada in the seventeenth and eighteenth century

Birthplace of Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley, Merritt Peck House, 213 High Street, Perth Amboy, New Jersey

Wilhelmina had three siblings: an older sister Jeanne and two younger brothers William and Alan Ramsey.  When Wilhelmina was four-years-old, the family moved to the New York suburb of St Albans, a residential neighbourhood in the southeastern portion of the New York City borough of Queens. Wilhelmina developed two loves during her pre-teen years.  One was a love of sketching and painting thanks to two of her unmarried aunts, Florence and Georgina Agnes Merritt and the other was the love of travel once her grandparents took her to Europe when she was just twelve years of age and it was the excitement of visiting so many new places that encouraged her to start writing a journal.

The Cooper Union

Wilhelmina soon developed a love of art and decided to follow the dream of becoming a professional painter.  In 1879, at the age of nineteen, she enrolled in the Cooper Union Women’s Art School, one of the New York art academies that is open to women.  The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art was established in 1859 and is among the nation’s oldest and most distinguished institutions of higher education. The college, founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist, Peter Cooper, offers a world-class education in art, architecture and engineering as well as an outstanding faculty of humanities and social sciences.  Cooper took the revolutionary step of opening the school to women as well as men. There was no colour bar at Cooper Union. Cooper demanded only a willingness to learn and a commitment to excellence, and in this he manifestly succeeded.

Two Women near the River Waal by Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley (1894)

Wilhelmina remained at the Cooper Union for a year and then enrolled at the Art Students League where she honed her artistic skills eventually becoming the first woman vice-president of this progressive institution. Her tutors included William Merritt Chase, Julian Alden Weir, Charles Yardley Turner and Kenyon Cox. The popularity of the Art Student League was that it was based in New York and the city attracted many European artists, many of whom Wilhelmina met while living and studying at the Arts League.

Young Woman in the Meadow by Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley

To escape the cold climate of New York, Wilhelmina spent the winter of 1891/2 on the island of Bermuda where she fell in and out of love with a mysterious Englishman whom she had agreed to marry.  Fortunately, she realised the error of her judgement and the two split up.  Once again, like so many American artists of the time, who succumbed to the magnetism of Paris, Wilhelmina was drawn towards the French capital to continue with her artistic tuition. On June 18th 1892, just a month before her thirty-second birthday, Wilhelmina once more, set sail for Europe on the Holland-America steamer Veendam.  During her Atlantic voyage, Wilhelmina was accompanied by the Dutch-American artist John Vanderpoel and his wife Jessie Elizabeth Humphreys. Vanderpoel. He was a well-known artist and taught at the Art Institute of Chicago where one of his tudents was Georgia O’Keeffe, and it was he who most likely suggested to Wilhelmina that she should spend the summer months at the charming village of Rijsoord near Dordrecht in the Netherlands, where he had founded an artists’ colony in 1886. 

Interior with Mother, two Children and Cat by Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley

On arriving in Paris Wilhelmina registered at the Académie Julian, one of only two art academies in the city to which women and foreign students were admitted.  Having arrived in the Summer, all the Academies were closed for the summer break and would not re-open until the September.  Wilhelmina used the time to travel throughout Belgium and the Netherlands and on 4 July 1892 she made her first visit to the Dutch flax village and artists’ colony at Rijsoord, where various foreign artists and art students had been living and working since 1888 especially during the summer months.  In 1893, Wilhelmina achieved her first artistic successes at the French Academy where she was awarded a prize for best composition.  Also for the first time, one of Wilhelmina’s paintings was selected for the Paris Salon that year, and success came from across the Atlantic when her painting, Holland Peasant Girl was shown in New York at an exhibition of the National Academy of Design

Girl Knitting in a Field by Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley

In 1893, Wilhelmina was appointed as an art teacher at Academy Colarossi and it was around this time that she met English-born Canadian art student, Laura Muntz  A friendship between the two women sprung up and Laura moved in with Wilhelmina at her studio at No. 111 Rue Notre-Dame-des -Champs. Close to the Palais de Luxembourg.  Directly across from their studio was the studio of American artist, James Abbott McNeill Whistler.  Both Laura and Wilhelmina were regular visitor to Whistler’s studio, and he to theirs.

Laura Muntz Lyall. 

Laura Munz, who was born in 1860 in Radford, Warwickshire, England, was the same age as Wilhelmina and is recognised as one of the most talented painters of her time.  She was an impressionist painter, best known for her depiction of mothers and children. When she was a small child, she emigrated with her family to Canada, where grew up on a farm in the Muskoka District of Ontario. 

A Daffodil by Laura Munz Lyall (1910)

In 1882, Laura began to take classes at the Ontario School of Art in Toronto.   She also studied briefly at the South Kensington School of Art in 1887, then returned to Canada to continue her studies at the Ontario School. She came to Paris in 1891 and before she met Wilhelmina had been living alone and earning money by teaching and administrative work.  She was the first Canadian to receive the distinguished “Honourable Mention” at the Paris Salon exhibition in 1895.

Portrait of Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley by Laura Munz (1897)

In 1896 Laura returned to Canada for a short spell to help look after an ailing relative.  She returned to Paris and the Academy Colarossi and was promoted to the post of  massiere (Studio head) at the Académie Colarossi.  In 1898 she returned to Canada in 1898 and set up a studio in Toronto to teach and paint.  In 1906, she moved to Montreal to continue her career and built up a large clientele that regarded her as the premier Canadian portraitist of children.  Following the death of her sister in 1915, she returned to Toronto and married her brother-in-law Charles W.B. Lyall and cared for his children of her sister’s marriage, eleven in all, but many had left home by then.  She set up a studio in the attic of their home, and started signing her works with her married name. Laura Munz Lyall died in Toronto in 1930, aged 70.

Rose by Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley (1895)

Wilhelmina and Laura spent part of the summers in the French countryside as well as the artists’ colony of Rijsoord in the southern Netherlands. She would often take her international students of the Académie Colarossi with her on these painting trips.   It was here that Wilhelmina captured the villagers in oils and watercolours. The village of Rijsoord was well situated for passing travellers on the Rijksstraatweg (State Highway), an important European road that connected Paris to The Hague.

The bridge over the River Waal at Rijsoord, with Hotel Warendorp on the right

An inn was constructed on the spot near the river Waal where the eighteenth-century tollhouse had stood. The building is still standing and for several years had housed the restaurant Hermitage. When Wilhelmina first visited Rijsoord, the inn was called Hotel Warendorp. Hotel Warendorp functioned as the headquarters of the summer academy. The ground floor of the building comprised a livingroom, diningroom and a room for drinking coffee. Most of the guestrooms were also on the ground floor. On the floor above it, the large space under the roof was used as an artists studio, where the artists would hang their most recent paintings and watercolors for discussion. On rainy days, when it was impossible to work en plein air, the artists would actually work in the studio. Wilhelmina’s great granddaughter, Alexandra van Dongen, wrote about how her great grandmother met her husband in her blog: For Two Years, or Perhaps Forever”; Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley and the Artists’ Colony in Rijsoord.  The tale is an instalment in a monthly series of blogs telling stories about the rich history shared by the American and the Dutch peoples.  She wrote:

“…In 1899, Wilhelmina apparently first encountered the 31-year-old Rijsoord farmer Bastiaan de Koning (1868-1954). They most likely met during a boat trip on the river Waal, as the story goes, as local villagers including De Koning, regularly rowed the artists to their outdoor painting locations. In the summer of 1900 Wilhelmina returned to Rijsoord again and announced her engagement to Bastiaan. They married a year later on December 5, 1901. Another three years later, when Wilhelmina was 44 years old, she gave birth to a daughter, my grandmother, Georgina Florence de Koning (1904-1973), named after Wilhelmina’s aunts. By that time, Wilhelmina had been active in the art world for twenty-five years. Family life did not prevent her from traveling abroad, visit exhibitions or meet her friends in Paris and New York. In 1915, her family in Rijsoord engaged a young housekeeper, Geertrui van Nielen (1895-1981), who became an important supporter in her life. Trui, or Troy, as she was called by Wilhelmina, took care of household matters and looked after Georgy, as Wilhelmina’s daughter was called, when her mother was traveling abroad …”

Wilhelmina continued to live with her husband and daughter in Rijsoord.  Years later she enjoyed the summer holiday visits from her daughter, Georgy, her husband, Hans van Dongen and their six children.  On February 18th, 1958, Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley passed away at home at the age of 97.

The information I used for this blog came from a number of excellent websites, all of which are worth visiting. They are:

The Society of the Hawley Family

For Two Years, or Perhaps Forever”; Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley and the Artists’ Colony in Rijsoord

Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley

Schildersdorp Rijsoord 1886-1914

New York Almanack

Finally, may I wish you all a Merry Christmas and hope that peace may return to us all.

Laura Wheeler Waring. Part 2.

Houses at Semur by Laura Wheeler Waring (1925)

Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port by Laura Wheeler Waring (1925)

After her short stay in the south of France, Waring returned to Paris in the Spring of 1925 and continued her studies at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiére whilst staying in the Villa de Villiers in Neuilly-sur-Seine.  That year Laura completed her paintings, Houses at Semur, France and Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. Critics believed this was a turning point in her artistic style as we see her use of vivid colours in order to express vivid, brilliant atmospheric conditions. Both works enhanced her growing reputation.  The following year, she had works shown at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Brooklyn Museum, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. And her standing in the art world was such that she was asked to curate the Negro Art section at the Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia.  

On June 23rd, 1927, Laura Wheeler was married to the Philadelphian, Walter Waring, a public-school teacher, who was ten years her junior and who was then working as a professor at the all-Black Lincoln University. The couple had no children. That same year, Laura won a gold medal in the annual Harmon Foundation Salon in New York. Laura Waring was actively painting during the Harlem Renaissance.  The Harlem Renaissance was an influential movement in African American literary, artistic, and cultural history from 1918 to the mid-to-late 1930s. The movement was originally referred to as the New Negro Movement, which referred to Alain LeRoy Locke’s 1925 book, The New Negro, which was an anthology that sought to motivate an African-American culture based in pride and self-dependence.

She was also involved with the Harmon Foundation.  It was established in 1921 by wealthy real-estate developer and philanthropist William E. Harmon who was a native of the Midwest, and whose father was an officer in the 10th Cavalry Regiment.  The Foundation originally supported a number of good causes but is best known for having served as a large-scale patron of African-American art and by so doing, helped gain recognition for African-American artists who otherwise would have remained largely unknown.

In 1944 the Harmon Foundation, which was under the direction of Mary Beattie Brady, organized an exhibition Portraits of Outstanding Americans of Negro Origin.  The idea behind the exhibition was to try and counteract racial intolerance, ignorance and bigotry by illustrating the accomplishments of contemporary African Americans. The exhibition featured forty-two oil paintings of leaders in the fields of civil rights, law, education, medicine, the arts, and the military. Betsy Graves Reyneau, Laura Wheeler Waring, and Robert Savon Pious painted the portraits that became known as the Harmon Collection. US Vice President Henry A. Wallace presented the first portrait, which featured scientist George Washington Carver, to the Smithsonian in 1944. The Harmon Foundation donated most of this collection to the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in 1967.

Anna Washington Derry by Laura Wheeler Waring (1927)

Laura Wheeler Waring will always be remembered for her portraiture and her most acclaimed work was not of the prosperous and famous African Americans which I have highlighted below but of a poor laundress, Anna Washington Derry.  She was one of five children who had moved with her family from Maryland to the eastern Pennsylvanian town of Strodsburgh, a borough in Monroe County.  Monroe was home to a small free Black community who had arrived via the Underground Railroad, a network of secret routes and safe houses used by enslaved African Americans to escape into free states.

The beautiful realistic depiction of the old lady beautifully conveys the lady’s dignity and inner determination through her use of simple, brown-beige tones of her dress, her expressive face, her folded arms and hands.  In the town where she lived Derry was looked upon as that of a community matriarch who was fondly addressed locally as “Annie”. The portrait was unveiled in 1926 at an elite exhibition for Black Philadelphian professionals some of whom may not have identified with Waring’s “ordinary” subject. The art historian Amanda Lampel commented:

“…Although Derry’s portrait did not sell that day, the Philadelphia Tribune, the oldest continuously published African American newspaper in the United States, called it remarkable……… Compared to fellow contemporaries like Aaron Douglas, Waring was much more conservative in her painting style and subject matter. This was in keeping with the types of artists who won the prestigious Harmon Foundation award, which sought to spotlight the up-and-coming Black artists of the Harlem Renaissance. Most of the award winners painted more like Waring and less like Douglas…”

In 1927 Laura exhibited the portrait of Anna Washington Derry at New York’s Harmon Foundation where it received the First Award in Fine Art – Harmon Awards for Distinguished Achievement Among Negroes. From there it was exhibited at Les Galeries du Luxembourg in Paris and across America.  The depiction was often reproduced in magazines and journals. The exhibition had its premiere at the Smithsonian Institution on May 2nd, 1944.  For the next ten years, Portraits of Outstanding Americans of Negro Origin, exhibition, travelled to museums, historical societies, municipal auditoriums, and community centres around the United States.  The public response was overwhelmingly positive in every venue.

James Weldon Johnson by Laura Wheeler Waring

Laura Wheeler Waring will be most remembered for her portraits of successful, upper class Negroes and whites including James Weldon Johnson, the successful Broadway lyricist, poet, novelist, diplomat, and a key figure in the NAACP, National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People.  In 1900, he collaborated with his brother to produce “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” a song that later acquired the subtitle of “The Negro National Anthem.”

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois by Laura Wheeler Waring

Another sitter for Laura was William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (W.E.B. DuBois), who was the first African-American to earn a doctorate from Harvard University  He then became a professor of history, sociology, and economics at Atlanta University, and  co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), and founder and editor of the NAACP’s magazine The Crisis. Laura Waring had worked for Du Bois, creating several illustrations for The Crisis. Laura depicts Du Bois seated at a wooden desk or table, looking to the right. The spectacles he holds in his right hand, and the small paper he holds in his left, confirm his status as an intellectual and academic.

Marian Anderson by Laura Wheeler Waing (1947)

Many women were sitters for Laura’s portraits including Mary White Ovington, an American suffragist, journalist, and co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP).  Another of her most famous female portraits was of  the opera singer, Marian Anderson.  This contralto singer, like many African American artists of the time, first achieved success in Europe. She was persuaded to return to America in 1935 and that year had a triumphant concert which secured her standing in the opera world.  In 1939 she became embroiled in a historic event when the Daughters of the American Revolution banned her appearance at its Constitution Hall because she was black. President Roosevelt’s wife, Eleanor, stepped into this controversial banning and arranged for her to take top billing at the Easter Sunday outdoor concert at the Lincoln Memorial, an event which drew in 75,000 opera fans as well as having the event broadcast to a radio audience of millions.

Jessie Redmon Fauset by Laura Wheeler Waring (1945)

Another female to have her portrait painted by Laura Wheeler Waring was Jessie Redmon Fauset, the first African American woman to be accepted into the chapter of Phi Beta Kappa at Cornell University, where she graduated with honours in 1905. Fauset then taught high school at M Street High School (now Dunbar High School) in Washington, D.C., until 1919  She then moved to New York City to serve as the literary editor of the NAACP’s official magazine, The Crisis. In that role, she worked alongside W. E. B. Du Bois to help usher in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

Alice Dunbar-Nelson by Laura Wheeler Waring (1927)

In the 1890s women formed national women’s club federations, most of which were dominated by upper-middle-class, educated, northern women. Few of these organizations were bi-racial, a legacy of the sometimes uneasy mid-nineteenth-century relationship between socially active African Americans and white women. Rising American prejudice led many white female activists to ban inclusion of their African American sisters. The black women’s club movement rose in answer in the late nineteenth century. The segregation of black women into distinct clubs produced vibrant organizations that promised racial uplift and civil rights for all blacks, as well as equal rights for women. Soon there followed another, more powerful group known as the National Association of Coloured Women in 1896. Women, including Laura Wheeler Waring and Alice Dunbar-Nelson, came together from a variety of backgrounds to combat negative stereotypes and fight for basic rights. Alice Dunbar-Nelson became the subject of Laura Wheeler Waring’s 1927 portrait. By the time the portrait was completed, Dunbar-Nelson was a prominent political activist and journalist and was much in demand as a public speaker. The depiction of her radiates her self-confidence and both artist and sitter were talented, intellectual women whose friendship helped advance the rights of both women and African Americans.

Waring died on February 3rd, 1948, aged 60, in her Philadelphia home after a long illness.  She was buried at Eden Cemetery in Collingdale, Pennsylvania. In 1949, Howard University Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. held an exhibition of art in her honour.  Her paintings were also included in the 2015 exhibition We Speak: Black Artists in Philadelphia, 1920s-1970s at Philadelphia’s Woodmere Art Museum.

Laura Wheeler Waring (1887-1948)

There is no doubt that although Laura spent most of her life in America she always treasured her three stays in France which played an important role in her artistic progress. During those three periods on French soil she was able to engage in its culture, and associated with famous French, African, and African American intellectuals. Her scholarship, her study at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, and her solo exhibition in Paris gave her recognition in the United States in the form of awards, supervisory and teaching positions, and additional exhibitions.  Like many of her colleagues, Waring cherished the freedom she found abroad, declaring in her diary:

“…In my very busy seasons here to come I shall want to relive some of these moments of atmosphere. I record them so that I can never say “I wish I had enjoyed that more” or “I didn’t apprecate all that then but now—[.]” I can never say the above truthfully because am grateful every minute and even the least of things gives me a thrill. . . . The very feeling of freedom is a pleasure and the ride on the bus down will be a joy…”

Much of the information for this blog and many of my other blogs in the past has come from an excellent website entitled The Art Story.

Other sources were:

A CONSTANT STIMULUS AND INSPIRATION”: LAURA WHEELER WARING IN PARIS IN THE 1910s and 1920s by Theresa Lieninger-Miller

BLACKPAST

SPEEDWELL

Ottalie Tolansky

After my very long last blog, here is a shorter one !

Ben Uri Gallery (Boundary Road, off Abbey Road, St John’s Wood, London)

When I was visiting London the other day, I visited the Ben Uri gallery in St John’s Wood, just off the famous Abbey Road.  I had been sent regular emails from the gallery about events and followed them on Facebook and was interested to visit the premises. 

The Girl in the Green Sari by Clara Klinghoffer

A few weeks ago I wrote about Clara Klinghoffer and I knew one of her paintings was at this gallery so I was interested to look at it up close.  I eventually found the gallery after going round in circles because I struggled to follow the GPS on my phone.  The gallery was much smaller than I had imagined but there on display was the Klinghoffer painting entitled The Girl in the Green Sari.

Girl in a Red Shirt by Ottilie Tolansky (c.1950)

The full-length painting was displayed in the small gallery and was quite impressive.  However, for me, more impressive was the full length painting next to it.  It was entitled Girl in a Red Shirt and the artist was given as Ottilie Tolansky and I knew I had to find out more about this unknown (to me) artist.

Self portrait by Ottilie Tolansky

Ottalie Pinkasovitch was born in Czernowitz, which was, at the time of her birth, in the northern Bukovian sector of the Austro-Hungary.  The town is now known as Chernivsti and is in western Ukraine.  She was born on May 30th 1912 into an Orthodox Jewish household.  Shortly after Ottalie was born, the town witnessed numerous riots directed against the Jewish community and so the family moved to live in Vienna.  For Ottalie, Vienna was home and she always looked upon herself as being Austrian. 

Reimann Art School in Berlin

In 1928, at the age of sixteen, the family were on the move again.  This time they set up home in Berlin where Ottalie’s father, an internationally recognised singer, took up the post of Obercantor at the city’s eighteenth century Alte Synagougue.  Meanwhile, the family having recognised that their daughter had a great talent for art decided to enter her into the Reimann School of Art in Berlin.  It was a private art school which had been founded in 1902 by Albert and Klara Reimann, and later in January 1937 was re-established in Regency Street, Pimlico, London following the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis. After leaving the Reimann School, she continued her studies at the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts.

Meadow Scene by Ottilie Tolansky

Hitler came to power in 1933 when he became the German Chancellor and with growing antisemitic views which swept the country the Pinkasovitch family moved to the safety of England.  Ottilie’s father accepted a job at a synagogue in Cheetham Hill, which was the predominantly Jewish area of Manchester.  Ottilie, who was enrolled at the Manchester Municipal School of Art, once again came into contact with her friend, the physicist Samuel Tolansky who was working at the University of Manchester. 

Mary Louise by Ottalie Tolansky

Samuel Tolansky had been born on November 17th 1907 in Newcastle upon Tyne. His parents had migrated to Great Britain around the turn of the century. His ancestors had come from Odessa but were of Lithuanian Jewish origin. Samuel was the second child in a family of two boys and two girls. His father was a tailor and, like most immigrants from Eastern Europe at the time, he had to start near the bottom of the ladder both financially and socially.  For the first ten years of life in England Samuel’s father lived in conditions of considerable poverty and that his son’s progress up the educational ladder was, at every critical stage, dependent on his ability to win scholarships and other awards.  However, Samuel worked hard and succeeded.

Samuel Tolansky

Ottilie had first met Samuel in Berlin in 1931 when he had been working at the Physikalisch-Technische Reicsansalt, a German government scientific institute.   In 1932, after a year working at the Berlin Institute he went to England and attended Imperial College London as a researcher into interferometry.  He remained in London until 1934.  From Imperial College London he relocated to Manchester and from 1934 to 1947 worked at the University of Manchester, as an Assistant Lecturer, later Senior Lecturer and Reader.  Ottilie and Samuel’s friendship blossomed and the couple found themselves in love.  The couple married in 1935.  Ottilie gave birth to their first child, Ann, who is now married and having graduated in history from Oxford University, became a solicitor. A second child, Jonathan, was born in London. He became a musician, a percussionist who has played in several of the leading orchestras.

Abstract by Ottilie Tolansky

Samuel and Ottilie Tolansky left Manchester and moved to London, where, after the war had ended, she attended the Hammersmith School of Art and regularly submitted her work at various exhibitions.  Ottilie’s portraiture, still lifes and figure drawings, which she completes mainly in oils and gouache are characterised by her main use of blues and violets.

Rabbi Joseph Trostmann by Ottilie Tolansky (c.1962)

One of her most famous portraits, in fact two paintings, is of her grandfather Rabbi Joseph Trostmann.  She based the depiction of the elderly man on her childhood recollections and family photographs.  One can be found at Stoke-on-Trent Art Gallery whilst the other was kept in the family.  After Ottilie died, her son Jonathan Tolansky, donated it to the Ben Uri Gallery.

Portrait of a Gentleman by Ottilie Tolansky

Ottilie Tolansky died in London on February 13th 1977 aged 64.  Her husband who had been nominated for a Nobel Prize, and was a principal investigator to the NASA lunar project known as the Apollo program, died four years earlier.

Alethea (Thea) Mary Proctor

Alethea Proctor by George Lambert (1903)

The subject of today’s blog is the Australian painter, Alethea (Thea) Mary Proctor.  Thea was born on October 2nd 1879 at Armidale, a town in the Northern Tablelands of New South Wales, two hundred and fifty miles north of Sydney.  She was the elder child of William Consett Proctor, an English-born solicitor who was also a member of the Legislative Assembly and his Queensland-born wife Kathleen Janet Louisa Proctor, (née Roberts), who was a cousin of the artist John Peter Russell .  Thea’s brother Frederick William was born three years later.  She and her brother were brought up in what was considered as a financially comfortable lifestyle. During the 1880s the family lived at Hunters Hill, Sydney, and when she was ten years old, she was sent to boarding school at Armidale. Thea’s mother was determined that her children should succeed in life and arranged for them to take violin lessons from an early age.

Self portrait by Thea Proctor (1921)

In 1892, Thea’s parents separated and were finally divorced five years later. After the parent’s separation, Thea’s mother took her two children to live with her mother at Bowral, in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, about ninety minutes southwest of Sydney and it was her maternal grandmother who encouraged and inspired Thea’s love of art. In 1894, at the age of fifteen, Thea attended Lynthorpe Ladies’ College, and at the end of the first school year she won a prize at the Bowral District Amateur Art Society’s exhibition. In 1896 she enrolled at the Julian Ashton’s art school, founded by Ashton, an English-born Australian artist. Thea also worked for a short time as an illustrator at the Australian Magazine.

The Bay by Thea Proctor (1927)

Thea’s mother Katherine, who was aware of her daughter’s artistic talent also realised that she would learn much more by visiting England and see what the art institutions had to offer her daughter. Kathleen Proctor and her twenty-two year-old daughter set sail from Australia in April 1903 and arrived in the English capital in early June. Once in London Thea studied at St John’s Wood Art Schools where she and George Washington Lambert once again became fellow students.

Self portrait by George Washington Lambert

Thea would often pose for George Lambert who once proclaimed that Thea was beautiful, tall, dark-haired, languorous and dignified.  She in turn found Lambert to be intellectually stimulating and she was devoted to him and their friendship was to last a lifetime.  Amongst the artist she met whilst in London were other expatriate Australians painters, Charles Conder, Arthur Streeton and Tom Roberts, all of who had been drawn to the opportunities London had to offer aspiring painters. 

Fan by Thea Proctor (1906)

Charles Conder’s fan designs fascinated Thea as did the Japanese prints which were circulating the English capital at the time.  Thea exhibited her decorative fans created in watercolours on silk at the Royal Academy of Arts and New English Art Club in London and they were deemed a great success.  Thea’s favourite painting medium was watercolours and she completed many works drawing and painting in watercolours.  She was also greatly interested in the costumes she saw worn by women at the Chelsea Arts Club Balls and the Ballet Russe which she went to see in 1911.

Yellow Cab, Hyde Park by Thea Proctor (1910)

Thea’s mother, Kathleen, returned to Australia during the summer of 1905 but her daughter decided to stay in England.  Thea favoured the inspiring environment of London with all its cultural riches, and it offered her the chance to learn more about art and it was here that she was able to exhibit her work. The downside for her was it was an expensive place to live but she lasted out till October 1912 when she eventually returned to Australia.  Once back home Thea exhibited her work in Sydney and Melbourne and both the National galleries of Victoria and New South Wales bought some of her works.   The sale of her paintings was not as good as she had expected and the lure of England became too great to ignore and in late 1914, she returned to London. 

Summer by Thea Proctor (1930)

Thea soon produced her first lithographs which, although she continued to paint, established her reputation when exhibited by the Senefelder Club, an organization formed in London in 1909 to promote the craft of art reproduction by the process of lithography.  Later she exhibited with the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers and at the Goupil Gallery.  In tandem with her love for art was her love of fashion and the theatre.  This combined love of theatre and fashion was reflected in her work.   This was brought home in an interview she gave in the March 1926 issue of The Home Magazine, a high quality Australian quarterly magazine published in Sydney.  In the article Modifying the Mode by Selecting the Suitable Century, Thea talked about women’s fashion in England and was quoted as saying:

“…In London it is different. There quite a number of people dress to express their personalities. I don’t mean fancy dress or anything startling like Isadora Duncan’s brother who used to wear a Greek tunic and sandals on Chelsea Embankment in the chilliest weather, or one London authoress who generally attends dinner parties in hunting pink – the long topcoat looped back over an evening dress. But there are so many ways – almost imperceptible ways – in which a woman can modify the existing fashion so as to make a dress express her own personality rather than the personality of the shop from which it came. And her own period – it is a mistake to think that all women belong to the twentieth century simply because they were born in it…”

The Swing by Thea Proctor (1926)

Proctor eventually returned to Australia and went to live firstly in Melbourne in 1921 where she endeavoured to raise people’s interest in lithography, but unfortunately she found little interest and so she returned to Sydney.

The White Vase by Thea Proctor

Back on Australian soil Thea still promoted her lithographs and in 1925 Thea teamed up with Margaret Rose Preston, an Australian painter and printmaker, to stage a  joint exhibition in Sydney and Melbourne. Both artists exhibited brightly coloured woodcuts in scarlet frames and despite Thea’s works being viewed in London as being comparatively conservative, many Australian critics thought them to be ‘dangerously modern’.   In 1926, Thea Proctor and her long-standing friend, George Lambert, who had also returned from England in 1921 founded the Contemporary Group in Sydney in 1926 to encourage young avant-garde artists.  Their annual exhibitions were held at various galleries including Macquarie Galleries, Farmer’s Blaxland Galleries, Grosvenor Galleries, David Jones’ Galleries.

Alethea Mary Proctor in 1964

Thea taught design at Ashton’s Sydney Art School and also took on the role of a private art tutor and in so doing, introduced many young budding artists to the world of linocut printing.  In the 1940s Thea taught drawing for the Society of Arts and Crafts.  Thea Proctor never married and died on July 29th 1966 at Potts Point, a small suburb in the inner-city of Sydney.  She was 87.  She was cremated with Anglican rites.

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 28th 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 27th 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- 20th 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 9th 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 29th 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- 20th century English artist

and

Clara Klinghoffer: the girl who drew like Raphael and Leonardo