Private
Gladys Hynes
(1888 - 1958)
The Railway Carriage
Private Collection
Gladys Hynes (1888 - 1958)
Pencil on paper
Size:
Height – 56cm
Width – 76.2cm
Literature: Llewellyn, Sacha, et al. Women Only Works on Paper. Liss Llewellyn, 2021, p. 50.
Although fifteen years separate The Railway Carriage and Siamese Cat, Gladys Hynes’ interest in a Vorticist-
inflected aesthetic – jagged, rhythmical and linear – which she first embraced in 1919, energizes both
works. Before the First World War, Hynes had been part of a thriving second-generation of Newlyn
painters, along with Laura Knight and Dod Procter, producing a striking body of work inspired by Cornwall’s
pools and rocks, cliff tops and ocean views. In 1919 she moved to London, taking lodgings in South
Hampstead with the poet John Rodker, whose Ovid press was publishing graphic work by former members
of the Vorticist group. In 1927, Hynes received what was to be the most important commission of
her career, to illustrate a folio edition of Ezra Pound’s Cantos 17‚Äì27, published by Rodker. Under this
influence, and revelling in her new independence as an observer of the urban scene, Hynes’ pictures
evolved noticeably towards a more modern aesthetic and subject-matter, a stylistic change that affronted
the Daily Mail’s critic, who in 1922 lamented that she has turned away from all that is beautiful and
soulful’.
This picture is part of the Peter & Renate Nahum collection.
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
