1937
oil on board
h66 x w56cm (unframed)

signed Mark Gertler and dated 37 (upper left)

Provenance:
The sitter, thence by descent; Christie’s, London, 18 November 2005, lot 16, where acquired by the present owner

Exhibited:
Colchester, The Minories, Mark Gertler 1891-1939, 1971, no. 48, with tour to London, The Morley College Gallery; Oxford, Ashmolean Museum and Sheffield, Graves Art Gallery.

Literature:
Ian Collins, A Broad Canvas: Art in East Anglia since 1880, Norwich, 1990, pp. 20-1.

Mark Gertler (1891 – 1939) was born to poor Polish-Jewish immigrants but through raw talent, force of will and patronage, became one of the most significant British painters of figure subjects, portraits and still-life of his generation. As a student at the Slade, he was in the company of an exceptionally talented group, including Paul Nash, Edward Wadsworth, C. R. W. Nevinson, Stanley Spencer and Isaac Rosenberg among others. Gertler’s patron was Lady Ottoline Morrell, through whom he became acquainted with the Bloomsbury Group. She introduced him to Walter Sickert, the nominal leader of the Camden Town Group. Gertler was soon enjoying success as a painter of society portraits. Gertler’s paintings are held in numerous public art collections, including the Tate, National Portrait Gallery and the V&A. In June 2015 his 1912 painting The Violinist was auctioned for £542,500 at Christie’s, London, a record for the sale of his work.

The present painting depicts Dorothy Morland, who began her working life as an unpaid administrator at London’s Institute of Contemporary Art and eventually became its Director. After the war, through her friendship with the architects Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, she met one of the ICA’s founders, Peter Gregory, and instantly became involved with the organisation. An integral part of the everyday working life at the ICA, Dorothy once commented ‘The ICA was like a railway station. People passed one another without realising that some would one day be famous and some would change the face of art beyond all recognition’ (see Fifty years of the ICA, A Chronicle of the Institute of Contemporary Art, London, 1997, p. 3).

Born in Hanwell, Middlesex in 1906, Dorothy Morland was educated at a French convent in St. Leonard’s, she then enrolled at the Royal College of Music. After leaving the RCM Dorothy contracted tuberculosis and was consequently sent to recuperate in Switzerland. It was there that she met her consultant, Andrew Morland, whom she eventually married. The Morlands became increasingly interested in the well-being of artists, musicians and people that worked for the ICA. She was also close friends with many important artists of the day and her obituary in The Guardian in June 1999 showed a photograph of Dorothy Morland at The Venice Biennale in 1948 with Roland Penrose, Henry Moore and Peter Gregory. It was through her husband that Dorothy met Mark Gertler who was a patient at the Mundesley sanitorium where Dr. Morland was a specialist. Gertler was recovering there from a bad bout of tuberculosis and this, mingled with his financial worries, had brought about the onset of depression, but he managed to make a reasonable recovery partly due to the Morlands.

Ian Collins comments ‘At Mundesley Gertler completed at least one painting of the local landscape … It was fortunate that his specialist, Dr. Andrew Morland, already admired his work – and the pair struck up a firm friendship. Gertler persuaded Morland to travel to Italy, to confirm that an old chum, the novelist D.H. Lawrence had TB. The doctor and his wife, Dorothy, had Gertler to stay with them at Mundesley at least twice, in 1930 and 1938, and they in turn became regular attenders at his Thursday social evenings in Hampstead. They acquired his picture Sanitorium Garden in Norfolk and in 1937 Gertler painted [the present work] a portrait of Dorothy Morland wearing a mantilla.’ (see I. Collins, loc. cit.).

In a Portrait of Dorothy Morland the subject sits resplendant, her dark, thickly painted hair, curling out from underneath a large mantilla which dominates much of the picture. The dappled transparent quality of the white lace contrasts with the blocked colours and shapes of the background. Gertler has painted the features finely but with his characteristic boldness and broad handling. Dorothy is striking in appearance, both elegant and contemplative, as she gazes out of the canvas. With such modernist works Gertler emphatically situated himself not just in the avant-garde of Britain at the time, but Europe.