Margaret Gardiner (artist)
Encyclopedia
Margaret Gardiner was a radical modern British artist and resident of Hampstead
, London, from 1932, where she was also a left wing political activist. She was also for a time the partner of Professor John Desmond Bernal the eminent scientist and political activist. She was known as "Mrs Bernal" for most of her life, but they were never married.
, then at Bedales, the liberally-minded school, followed by Newnham College, Cambridge. There she read Modern Languages, but transferred to moral sciences, the Cambridge term for Philosophy
. Her family was wealthy and she had no need to work, devoting her life instead to politics and the arts.
where her father, the Egyptologist Sir Alan Gardiner
, was working at the time. In 1923 he assisted Howard Carter
and Lord Carnarvon
with the opening of Tutankhamun
's tomb. Her mother was Hedwig, Lady Gardiner, whose father was an Hungarian
Jew and mother a Swedish Finn. Her brother was Henry Rolf Gardiner
.
At Cambridge she fell in love with Bernard Deacon, a scholar at Trinity
but was shattered when he died from blackwater fever
whilst working in the New Hebrides
in 1927 at the age of 24. She visited his grave there 56 years later.
After Cambridge she spent a brief, but unsuccessful, time as an elementary school teacher in Gamlingay
. Afterwards she devoted her time and energy to supporting her friends: Barbara Hepworth
, Hepworth's second husband, Ben Nicholson
, WH Auden, Berthold Lubetkin
, Solly Zuckerman
, Naum Gabo
and others.
She made her home at 35 Downshire Hill, Hampstead, close to the Heath
where she swam in the ponds into her 90's.
Her son with Bernal is Martin Bernal
, author of "Black Athena
" born 1937. Gardiner always referred to herself as "Mrs Bernal" but they were never married. Bernal had three other children, two with Agnes Eileen Sprague, a secretary, and one with Margot Heinemann
but his only marriage was to Sprague whom he married on 21 June 1922, the day after being awarded his BA degree when he was aged 21.
but had reservations about Stalin. In the 1960s she organised full-page advertisements in the Times
signed by well-known people opposed to the Vietnam War
. She was also a supporter of CND.
In the 1970 general election Ben Whitaker, Labour
MP for Hampstead, lost his seat as a result of a far-left candidate standing whom Gardiner had financed.
, Orkney, as a retreat. She was the founder, in 1979 of the Pier Art Gallery
in Stromness
. One of the works there is "Curved Form (Trevalgan)" by her longtime friend Barbara Hepworth
in 1956 which Gardiner kept on display in her back garden in Hampstead. The work, named after a hill in Cornwall
between Zennor
and St Ives
, was Hepworth's first entirely bronze
works. She gave 67 works of art to the people of Orkney and "Curved Form" now sits outside on the Centre's pier on the original plinth from Gardiner's garden.
Hampstead
Hampstead is an area of London, England, north-west of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Camden in Inner London, it is known for its intellectual, liberal, artistic, musical and literary associations and for Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland...
, London, from 1932, where she was also a left wing political activist. She was also for a time the partner of Professor John Desmond Bernal the eminent scientist and political activist. She was known as "Mrs Bernal" for most of her life, but they were never married.
Education
She was educated at the Fröbel School in HammersmithHammersmith
Hammersmith is an urban centre in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in west London, England, in the United Kingdom, approximately five miles west of Charing Cross on the north bank of the River Thames...
, then at Bedales, the liberally-minded school, followed by Newnham College, Cambridge. There she read Modern Languages, but transferred to moral sciences, the Cambridge term for Philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
. Her family was wealthy and she had no need to work, devoting her life instead to politics and the arts.
Personal life
She was born in BerlinBerlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
where her father, the Egyptologist Sir Alan Gardiner
Alan Gardiner
Sir Alan Henderson Gardiner was one of the premier British Egyptologists of the early and mid-20th century...
, was working at the time. In 1923 he assisted Howard Carter
Howard Carter (archaeologist)
Howard Carter was an English archaeologist and Egyptologist, noted as a primary discoverer of the tomb of Tutankhamun.-Beginning of career:...
and Lord Carnarvon
George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon
George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon was an English aristocrat best known as the financial backer of the search for and the excavation of Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings.-Biography:...
with the opening of Tutankhamun
Tutankhamun
Tutankhamun , Egyptian , ; approx. 1341 BC – 1323 BC) was an Egyptian pharaoh of the 18th dynasty , during the period of Egyptian history known as the New Kingdom...
's tomb. Her mother was Hedwig, Lady Gardiner, whose father was an Hungarian
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
Jew and mother a Swedish Finn. Her brother was Henry Rolf Gardiner
Rolf Gardiner
Henry Rolf Gardiner was an English rural revivalist and sympathizer with Nazism. He was founder of groups significant in the British history of organic farming, as well being a participant in inter-war far right politics.-Early life:...
.
At Cambridge she fell in love with Bernard Deacon, a scholar at Trinity
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...
but was shattered when he died from blackwater fever
Blackwater fever
Blackwater fever is a complication of malaria in which red blood cells burst in the bloodstream , releasing hemoglobin directly into the blood vessels and into the urine, frequently leading to kidney failure...
whilst working in the New Hebrides
New Hebrides
New Hebrides was the colonial name for an island group in the South Pacific that now forms the nation of Vanuatu. The New Hebrides were colonized by both the British and French in the 18th century shortly after Captain James Cook visited the islands...
in 1927 at the age of 24. She visited his grave there 56 years later.
After Cambridge she spent a brief, but unsuccessful, time as an elementary school teacher in Gamlingay
Gamlingay
Gamlingay is a village and civil parish in South Cambridgeshire, England, near the border with Bedfordshire, and the traditional county of Huntingdonshire...
. Afterwards she devoted her time and energy to supporting her friends: Barbara Hepworth
Barbara Hepworth
Dame Barbara Hepworth DBE was an English sculptor. Her work exemplifies Modernism, and with such contemporaries as Ivon Hitchens, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo she helped to develop modern art in Britain.-Life and work:Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth was born on 10 January 1903 in Wakefield,...
, Hepworth's second husband, Ben Nicholson
Ben Nicholson
Benjamin Lauder "Ben" Nicholson, OM was a British painter of abstract compositions , landscape and still-life.-Background and Training:...
, WH Auden, Berthold Lubetkin
Berthold Lubetkin
Berthold Romanovich Lubetkin was a Russian émigré architect who pioneered modernist design in Britain in the 1930s. His work includes the Highpoint housing complex, London Zoo penguin pool, Finsbury Health Centre and Spa Green Estate.-Early years:Berthold Lubetkin was born in Tiflis into a Jewish...
, Solly Zuckerman
Solly Zuckerman
Solly Zuckerman, Baron Zuckerman, OM, KCB, FRS was a British public servant, zoologist, and scientific advisor who is best remembered as an advisor to the Allies on bombing strategy in World War II, for his work to advance the cause of nuclear non-proliferation, and for his role in bringing...
, Naum Gabo
Naum Gabo
Naum Gabo KBE, born Naum Neemia Pevsner was a prominent Russian sculptor in the Constructivism movement and a pioneer of Kinetic Art.-Early life:...
and others.
She made her home at 35 Downshire Hill, Hampstead, close to the Heath
Hampstead Heath
Hampstead Heath is a large, ancient London park, covering . This grassy public space sits astride a sandy ridge, one of the highest points in London, running from Hampstead to Highgate, which rests on a band of London clay...
where she swam in the ponds into her 90's.
Her son with Bernal is Martin Bernal
Martin Bernal
Martin Gardiner Bernal is a Professor Emeritus of Government and Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University. He is a scholar of modern Chinese political history...
, author of "Black Athena
Black Athena
Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization is a highly controversial three-volume work by Martin Bernal. He discusses Ancient Greece in a new light. Bernal's thesis discusses the perception of ancient Greece in relation to Greece's African and Asiatic neighbors, which he...
" born 1937. Gardiner always referred to herself as "Mrs Bernal" but they were never married. Bernal had three other children, two with Agnes Eileen Sprague, a secretary, and one with Margot Heinemann
Margot Heinemann
Margot Claire Heinemann was a British Marxist writer, drama scholar, and leading member of the Communist Party of Great Britain ....
but his only marriage was to Sprague whom he married on 21 June 1922, the day after being awarded his BA degree when he was aged 21.
Politics
With Bernal, who was a Communist, she was part of the 1930s and 40s group campaigning "For Intellectual Liberty". Gardiner was however not pressed to join the party. She spent a winter with Bernal in MoscowMoscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
but had reservations about Stalin. In the 1960s she organised full-page advertisements in the Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
signed by well-known people opposed to the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
. She was also a supporter of CND.
In the 1970 general election Ben Whitaker, Labour
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
MP for Hampstead, lost his seat as a result of a far-left candidate standing whom Gardiner had financed.
Orkney
She spent a large part of her life away from London on RousayRousay
Rousay is a small, hilly island about north of Orkney's Mainland, off the north coast of Scotland, and has been nicknamed "the Egypt of the north", due to its tremendous archaeological diversity and importance....
, Orkney, as a retreat. She was the founder, in 1979 of the Pier Art Gallery
Pier Art Gallery
The Pier Art Gallery in Stromness, Orkney, was opened to the public in 1979. The art collector Margaret Gardiner first visited Orkney in the 1950s and converted the old quayside building to house her collection of modern paintings and sculpture. It began as a personal collection of her friends'...
in Stromness
Stromness
Stromness is the second-biggest town in Orkney, Scotland. It is in the south-west of Mainland Orkney. It is also a parish, with the town of Stromness as its capital.-Etymology:...
. One of the works there is "Curved Form (Trevalgan)" by her longtime friend Barbara Hepworth
Barbara Hepworth
Dame Barbara Hepworth DBE was an English sculptor. Her work exemplifies Modernism, and with such contemporaries as Ivon Hitchens, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo she helped to develop modern art in Britain.-Life and work:Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth was born on 10 January 1903 in Wakefield,...
in 1956 which Gardiner kept on display in her back garden in Hampstead. The work, named after a hill in Cornwall
Cornwall
Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...
between Zennor
Zennor
Zennor is a village and civil parish in Cornwall in England. The parish includes the villages of Zennor, Boswednack and Porthmeor and the hamlet of Treen. It is located on the north coast, about north of Penzance. Alphabetically, the parish is the last in Britain—its name comes from the Cornish...
and St Ives
St Ives, Cornwall
St Ives is a seaside town, civil parish and port in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The town lies north of Penzance and west of Camborne on the coast of the Celtic Sea. In former times it was commercially dependent on fishing. The decline in fishing, however, caused a shift in commercial...
, was Hepworth's first entirely bronze
Bronze
Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...
works. She gave 67 works of art to the people of Orkney and "Curved Form" now sits outside on the Centre's pier on the original plinth from Gardiner's garden.