Private
Gladys Hynes
(1888 - 1958)
Cherubs, 1939
Private Collection
Gladys Hynes (1888 - 1958)
Size:
Height – 100cm
Width – 150cm
Exhibited: Daily Express Young Artists Exhibition at The Galleries of the Royal Society of British Artists in Pall Mall in June 1927
Literature: The Sphere, June 18th 1927;
Patrick Elliot & Sacha Llewellyn; True to Life, British Realist Painting in the 1920s & 1930s, July 2017, ISBN 978 1 911054 05 4, Cat. 49, page 95.
Llewellyn, Sacha, and Paul Liss. Portrait of an Artist. Liss Llewellyn, 2021, p.350.
Noah’s Ark was exhibited at the Daily Express Young Artist’s Exhibition at The Galleries of the Royal Society of British Artists in Pall Mall in June 1927 where it was on sale for 100 guineas.
The work is highly original; with its well defined outlines, clearly delineated areas of bold and vigorous colour and hard-edged imagery, it shows the influence of Vorticism. Hynes was friends with Ezra Pound, the American poet and critic who gave the name Vorticism to the movement in 1913. In 1956 Pound wrote to Hynes: Wyndham Lewis certainly made Vorticism. To him alone we owe the existence of Blast
The Observer’s Italophile critic P G Konody also saw the influence of the Italian Renaissance in Hynes work, writing in 1922, her assumed naivety, backed by consummate draughtsmanship, is perfectly delightful, her sense of humour probably unique among women artists”
Portrait of Gladys Hynes by Sir Cedric Morris (1889-1982)
Oil on canvas
Miss Gladys on the Veranda by Harold Knight (1874-1961)
Oil on canvas
Gladys Hynes was born in Indore, India, to an Irish Catholic
family, with whom she emigrated to London in 1891, later
studying at the London School of Art in Earl’s Court. After her
family moved to Penzance in 1906, she attended the Stanhope
Forbes School of Painting, Newlyn, She returned to London in
1919, where she settled in Hampstead.
Hynes was a supporter of the Irish Republican cause (her
correspondence with Desmond Fitzgerald is the subject of an article
by Ed Vulliamy in The Guardian 26.03.2016). A member of the
CWSS, she was also an impassioned campaigner for women’s rights,
often challenging the social construction of gender and sexuality in
her work. Many of the paintings she produced during WWII were
shaped by her mainly pacifist convictions.
During her career, Hynes contributed to Roger Fry’s (1866′
1934) Omega Workshops, illustrated books ‘ including the folio
edition of Ezra Pound’s A Draft of the Cantos nos. XVII to XXVII
(1928) ‘ undertook sculpture commissions and theatre designs.
She exhibited with the RA, the LG, the International Society of
Sculptors, the Paris Salon and at the 1924 Venice Biennale.
With thanks to artbiogs.co.uk
