Mark Gertler
Encyclopedia
Mark Gertler was a British painter of figure subjects, portraits and still-life.
His early life and his relationship with Dora Carrington
were the inspiration for Gilbert Cannan
's novel Mendel. The characters of Loerke in D. H. Lawrence
's Women in Love
and Gombauld in Aldous Huxley
's Crome Yellow
were based on him.
, London
, the youngest child of Polish Jewish immigrants, Louis Gertler and Kate "Golda" Berenbaum. He had four older siblings: Deborah (b. 1881), Harry (b. 1882), Sophie (b. 1883) and Jacob "Jack" (b. 1886).
In 1892 his parents took the family to his mother's native city, Przemyśl
, Austria-Hungary
(now Poland), where they worked as innkeepers. Though Louis was popular with his customers, mainly Austrian soldiers, the inn was a failure. One night without telling anyone Louis simply left for America (ca. 1893) in search of work. He eventually sent word to Golda telling her that once he was settled she was to bring the children to live with him there. However, this venture also failed and his family never joined him in America.
Instead Louis returned to Britain, and had his family join him in London in 1896, when Marks's first name was anglicized as 'Mark'.
From an early age Gertler showed signs of having a great talent for drawing. Upon leaving school in 1906, he enrolled in art classes at Regent Street Polytechnic
. Unfortunately, due to his family's poverty, he was forced to drop out after a year and in December 1907 began working as an apprentice at Clayton & Bell, a stained glass company. He disliked his work there and rarely spoke of it in later years. While there he attended evening classes at the Polytechnic. In 1908 Gertler placed third in a national art competition; this inspired him to apply for a scholarship from the Jewish Education Aid Society (JEAS) in order to resume his studies as an artist. The application was successful. Upon the advice of the prominent Jewish artist William Rothenstein
, in 1908 he enrolled at the Slade School of Art, University College, London. During the four years that he spent at the Slade, Gertler was a contemporary of Paul Nash
, Edward Wadsworth
, C.R.W. Nevinson and Stanley Spencer
, among others.
It was during his time at Slade that Gertler met the painter Dora Carrington
, whom he pursued relentlessly for many years. His obsessive love for Carrington is detailed in his published letters (see bibliography below) and in Sarah MacDougall's book Mark Gertler. It is also represented in the 1995 film Carrington
. His love for Carrington was unrequited, and she spent most of her life living with the homosexual author Lytton Strachey
, whom she was deeply in love with. Carrington's unconventional relationship with Strachey, whom Gertler was extremely jealous of, and her eventual marriage to Ralph Partridge, destroyed her equally complex relationship with Gertler.
He had been so distraught when he learned of Carrington's marriage that he tried to purchase a revolver, and threatened to commit suicide.
, 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, but his temperamental manner and devotion to advancing his work according to his own vision led to increasing personal frustration and the alienation of potential sitters and buyers. As a result, he struggled frequently with poverty.
In 1914 the polymath
art collector Edward Marsh became Gertler's patron. The relationship between the two men proved a difficult one, as Gertler felt that the system of patronage and the circle in which he moved was in direct conflict with his sense of self. In 1916, as World War I
dragged on, Gertler ended the relationship due to his pacifism
and conscientious objection (Marsh being secretary to Winston Churchill
and patron to some of the war poets). His major painting, The Merry-Go-Round, was created in the midst of the war years and was described by Lawrence as "the best modern picture I have seen" (Letters, 9 October 1916). Post-war visits to France lessened his devotion to Cezanne.
In 1913 Gertler met the author and poet Gilbert Cannan
who later described him as 'a small passionate man with green eyes'. Cannan subsequently invited Mark to stay with him and his wife Mary at their Mill House in Cholesbury
and the two men became good friends. Gertler lived there on and off between 1915-16 and painted Gilbert Cannan at his Mill now on view in the Ashmolean Museum
in Oxford
.
The picture depicts Cannan outside the Mill with his two dogs. The black and white one called Luath had been the inspiration for the dog Nana in the stage production of J. M. Barrie's
Peter Pan
. It was Cannan who was responsible for introducing Lady Ottoline Morrell
to Gertler's paintings and encouraging her to support his work. Cannan closely based the young Jewish character of his 1916 novel Mendel on Gertler's early life including his infatuation and affair with fellow artist Dora Carrington
. A relationship which remained unfulfilled as Dora spurned his numerous advances and instead declared her love for Lytton Strachey
. Cannan's and Gertler's friendship waned after 1916, due in main to Cannan's increasingly unstable behaviour.
Virginia Woolf
recorded her impressions of Gertler after he came to visit her and her husband in Sussex in September 1918. As he left they cried, ‘“Good God, what an egoist!” We have been talking about Gertler to Gertler for some 30 hours; it is like putting a microscope to your eye. One molehill is wonderfully clear; the surrounding world ceases to exist. But he is a forcible young man; if limited, able & respectable within those limits; as hard as a cricket ball; & as tightly rounded & stuffed in at the edges. We discussed — well, it always came back to Gertler. “I have a very peculiar character ... I am not like any other artist ... My picture would not have those blank spaces ... I don’t see that, because in my case I have a sense which other people don’t have ... I saw in a moment what she had never dreamt of seeing ...” & so on. And if you do slip a little away, he watches very jealously, from his own point of view, & somehow tricks you back again. He hoards an insatiable vanity. I suspect the truth to be that he is very anxious for the good opinion of people like ourselves, & would immensely like to be thought well of by Duncan [Grant], Vanessa [Bell] & Roger [Fry]. His triumphs have been too cheap so far. However this is honestly outspoken, & as I say, he has power & intelligence, & will, one sees, paint good interesting pictures, though some rupture of the brain would have to take place before he could be a painter.'
Gertler's later works developed a sometimes very harsh edge to them, influenced by his increasing ill health. In 1920 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis
, a disease which forced him to enter a sanatorium
on a number of occasions during the twenties and thirties. Two of Gertler's close friends, D. H. Lawrence
and Katherine Mansfield
, both succumbed to the disease.
In 1930 Gertler married Marjorie Greatorex Hodgkinson, which resulted in the birth of a son, Luke Gertler, in 1932. The marriage was often difficult, punctuated by the frequent ill health of both, and with Gertler often suffering from the same feelings of constraint that destroyed his relationships with a number of friends and patrons.
During the 1930s he also became a part-time teacher at the Westminster School of Art
in order to supplement his intermittent income from painting.
Gertler gassed himself in his London studio in 1939, having attempted suicide on at least one prior occasion in 1936. He was suffering at the time from increasing financial difficulties, his wife had recently left him, he had held a critically derided exhibition at the Lefevre Gallery, he was still depressed over the death of his mother and Carrington's own suicide (both in 1932), and he was filled with fear over the imminent world war. Gertler’s obituary in The Times described his death as ‘a serious loss to British art. Opinions of his work are likely to vary,’ it conceded, ‘but it is safe to say that a considered list of the half-dozen most important painters under fifty working in England would include him'. He was buried at Willesden Jewish cemetery.
Today Gertler's Spitalfields residence is home to the atelier of British tailor Timothy Everest
.
His early life and his relationship with Dora Carrington
Dora Carrington
Dora de Houghton Carrington , known generally as Carrington, was a British painter and decorative artist, remembered in part for her association with members of the Bloomsbury Group, especially the writer Lytton Strachey....
were the inspiration for Gilbert Cannan
Gilbert Cannan
Gilbert Cannan was a British novelist and dramatist.-Early life:Born in Manchester of Scottish descent, he got on badly with his family, and in 1897 he was sent to live in Oxford with the economist Edwin Cannan...
's novel Mendel. The characters of Loerke in D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
's Women in Love
Women in Love
Women in Love is a novel by British author D. H. Lawrence published in 1920. It is a sequel to his earlier novel The Rainbow , and follows the continuing loves and lives of the Brangwen sisters, Gudrun and Ursula. Gudrun Brangwen, an artist, pursues a destructive relationship with Gerald Crich, an...
and Gombauld in Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
's Crome Yellow
Crome Yellow
Crome Yellow is the first novel by British author Aldous Huxley. It was published in 1921. In the book, Huxley satirises the fads and fashions of the time. It is the witty story of a house party at "Crome"...
were based on him.
Early life
Marks Gertler was born on 9 December 1891 in SpitalfieldsSpitalfields
Spitalfields is a former parish in the borough of Tower Hamlets, in the East End of London, near to Liverpool Street station and Brick Lane. The area straddles Commercial Street and is home to many markets, including the historic Old Spitalfields Market, founded in the 17th century, Sunday...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, the youngest child of Polish Jewish immigrants, Louis Gertler and Kate "Golda" Berenbaum. He had four older siblings: Deborah (b. 1881), Harry (b. 1882), Sophie (b. 1883) and Jacob "Jack" (b. 1886).
In 1892 his parents took the family to his mother's native city, Przemyśl
Przemysl
Przemyśl is a city in south-eastern Poland with 66,756 inhabitants, as of June 2009. In 1999, it became part of the Podkarpackie Voivodeship; it was previously the capital of Przemyśl Voivodeship....
, Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
(now Poland), where they worked as innkeepers. Though Louis was popular with his customers, mainly Austrian soldiers, the inn was a failure. One night without telling anyone Louis simply left for America (ca. 1893) in search of work. He eventually sent word to Golda telling her that once he was settled she was to bring the children to live with him there. However, this venture also failed and his family never joined him in America.
Instead Louis returned to Britain, and had his family join him in London in 1896, when Marks's first name was anglicized as 'Mark'.
From an early age Gertler showed signs of having a great talent for drawing. Upon leaving school in 1906, he enrolled in art classes at Regent Street Polytechnic
University of Westminster
The University of Westminster is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom. Its origins go back to the foundation of the Royal Polytechnic Institution in 1838, and it was awarded university status in 1992.The university's headquarters and original campus are based on Regent...
. Unfortunately, due to his family's poverty, he was forced to drop out after a year and in December 1907 began working as an apprentice at Clayton & Bell, a stained glass company. He disliked his work there and rarely spoke of it in later years. While there he attended evening classes at the Polytechnic. In 1908 Gertler placed third in a national art competition; this inspired him to apply for a scholarship from the Jewish Education Aid Society (JEAS) in order to resume his studies as an artist. The application was successful. Upon the advice of the prominent Jewish artist William Rothenstein
William Rothenstein
Sir William Rothenstein was an English painter, draughtsman and writer on art.-Life and work:William Rothenstein was born into a German-Jewish family in Bradford, West Yorkshire. His father, Moritz, emigrated from Germany in 1859 to work in Bradford's burgeoning textile industry...
, in 1908 he enrolled at the Slade School of Art, University College, London. During the four years that he spent at the Slade, Gertler was a contemporary of Paul Nash
Paul Nash (artist)
Paul Nash was a British landscape painter, surrealist and war artist, as well as a book-illustrator, writer and designer of applied art. He was the older brother of the artist John Nash.-Early life:...
, Edward Wadsworth
Edward Wadsworth
Edward Alexander Wadsworth was an English artist, most famous for his close association with Vorticism. He painted, often in tempera, coastal views, abstracts, portraits and still-life...
, C.R.W. Nevinson and Stanley Spencer
Stanley Spencer
Sir Stanley Spencer was an English painter. Much of his work depicts Biblical scenes, from miracles to Crucifixion, happening not in the Holy Land but in the small Thames-side village where he was born and spent most of his life...
, among others.
It was during his time at Slade that Gertler met the painter Dora Carrington
Dora Carrington
Dora de Houghton Carrington , known generally as Carrington, was a British painter and decorative artist, remembered in part for her association with members of the Bloomsbury Group, especially the writer Lytton Strachey....
, whom he pursued relentlessly for many years. His obsessive love for Carrington is detailed in his published letters (see bibliography below) and in Sarah MacDougall's book Mark Gertler. It is also represented in the 1995 film Carrington
Carrington (film)
Carrington is a biographical film written and directed by Christopher Hampton about the life of the English painter Dora Carrington , who was known simply as "Carrington"...
. His love for Carrington was unrequited, and she spent most of her life living with the homosexual author Lytton Strachey
Lytton Strachey
Giles Lytton Strachey was a British writer and critic. He is best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit...
, whom she was deeply in love with. Carrington's unconventional relationship with Strachey, whom Gertler was extremely jealous of, and her eventual marriage to Ralph Partridge, destroyed her equally complex relationship with Gertler.
He had been so distraught when he learned of Carrington's marriage that he tried to purchase a revolver, and threatened to commit suicide.
Career
Gertler's patron was Lady Ottoline MorrellLady Ottoline Morrell
The Lady Ottoline Violet Anne Morrell was an English aristocrat and society hostess. Her patronage was influential in artistic and intellectual circles, where she befriended writers such as Aldous Huxley, Siegfried Sassoon, T. S. Eliot and D. H...
, through whom he became acquainted with the Bloomsbury Group
Bloomsbury Group
The Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set was a group of writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists who held informal discussions in Bloomsbury throughout the 20th century. This English collective of friends and relatives lived, worked or studied near Bloomsbury in London during the first half...
. She introduced him to Walter Sickert
Walter Sickert
Walter Richard Sickert , born in Munich, Germany, was a painter who was a member of the Camden Town Group in London. He was an important influence on distinctively British styles of avant-garde art in the 20th century....
, the nominal leader of the Camden Town Group
Camden Town Group
The Camden Town Group was a group of English Post-Impressionist artists active 1911-1913. They gathered frequently at the studio of painter Walter Sickert in the Camden Town area of London.-History:...
. Gertler was soon enjoying success as a painter of society portraits, but his temperamental manner and devotion to advancing his work according to his own vision led to increasing personal frustration and the alienation of potential sitters and buyers. As a result, he struggled frequently with poverty.
In 1914 the polymath
Polymath
A polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. In less formal terms, a polymath may simply be someone who is very knowledgeable...
art collector Edward Marsh became Gertler's patron. The relationship between the two men proved a difficult one, as Gertler felt that the system of patronage and the circle in which he moved was in direct conflict with his sense of self. In 1916, as World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
dragged on, Gertler ended the relationship due to his pacifism
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
and conscientious objection (Marsh being secretary to Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
and patron to some of the war poets). His major painting, The Merry-Go-Round, was created in the midst of the war years and was described by Lawrence as "the best modern picture I have seen" (Letters, 9 October 1916). Post-war visits to France lessened his devotion to Cezanne.
In 1913 Gertler met the author and poet Gilbert Cannan
Gilbert Cannan
Gilbert Cannan was a British novelist and dramatist.-Early life:Born in Manchester of Scottish descent, he got on badly with his family, and in 1897 he was sent to live in Oxford with the economist Edwin Cannan...
who later described him as 'a small passionate man with green eyes'. Cannan subsequently invited Mark to stay with him and his wife Mary at their Mill House in Cholesbury
Cholesbury
Cholesbury is a village in Buckinghamshire, England, on the border with Hertfordshire. It is situated in the Chiltern Hills, about east of Wendover, north of Chesham and from Berkhamsted....
and the two men became good friends. Gertler lived there on and off between 1915-16 and painted Gilbert Cannan at his Mill now on view in the Ashmolean Museum
Ashmolean Museum
The Ashmolean Museum on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is the world's first university museum...
in Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
.
J. M. Barrie
Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM was a Scottish author and dramatist, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. The child of a family of small-town weavers, he was educated in Scotland. He moved to London, where he developed a career as a novelist and playwright...
Peter Pan
Peter Pan
Peter Pan is a character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie . A mischievous boy who can fly and magically refuses to grow up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood adventuring on the small island of Neverland as the leader of his gang the Lost Boys, interacting with...
. It was Cannan who was responsible for introducing Lady Ottoline Morrell
Lady Ottoline Morrell
The Lady Ottoline Violet Anne Morrell was an English aristocrat and society hostess. Her patronage was influential in artistic and intellectual circles, where she befriended writers such as Aldous Huxley, Siegfried Sassoon, T. S. Eliot and D. H...
to Gertler's paintings and encouraging her to support his work. Cannan closely based the young Jewish character of his 1916 novel Mendel on Gertler's early life including his infatuation and affair with fellow artist Dora Carrington
Dora Carrington
Dora de Houghton Carrington , known generally as Carrington, was a British painter and decorative artist, remembered in part for her association with members of the Bloomsbury Group, especially the writer Lytton Strachey....
. A relationship which remained unfulfilled as Dora spurned his numerous advances and instead declared her love for Lytton Strachey
Lytton Strachey
Giles Lytton Strachey was a British writer and critic. He is best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit...
. Cannan's and Gertler's friendship waned after 1916, due in main to Cannan's increasingly unstable behaviour.
Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
recorded her impressions of Gertler after he came to visit her and her husband in Sussex in September 1918. As he left they cried, ‘“Good God, what an egoist!” We have been talking about Gertler to Gertler for some 30 hours; it is like putting a microscope to your eye. One molehill is wonderfully clear; the surrounding world ceases to exist. But he is a forcible young man; if limited, able & respectable within those limits; as hard as a cricket ball; & as tightly rounded & stuffed in at the edges. We discussed — well, it always came back to Gertler. “I have a very peculiar character ... I am not like any other artist ... My picture would not have those blank spaces ... I don’t see that, because in my case I have a sense which other people don’t have ... I saw in a moment what she had never dreamt of seeing ...” & so on. And if you do slip a little away, he watches very jealously, from his own point of view, & somehow tricks you back again. He hoards an insatiable vanity. I suspect the truth to be that he is very anxious for the good opinion of people like ourselves, & would immensely like to be thought well of by Duncan [Grant], Vanessa [Bell] & Roger [Fry]. His triumphs have been too cheap so far. However this is honestly outspoken, & as I say, he has power & intelligence, & will, one sees, paint good interesting pictures, though some rupture of the brain would have to take place before he could be a painter.'
Gertler's later works developed a sometimes very harsh edge to them, influenced by his increasing ill health. In 1920 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
, a disease which forced him to enter a sanatorium
Sanatorium
A sanatorium is a medical facility for long-term illness, most typically associated with treatment of tuberculosis before antibiotics...
on a number of occasions during the twenties and thirties. Two of Gertler's close friends, D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
and Katherine Mansfield
Katherine Mansfield
Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp Murry was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. Mansfield left for Great Britain in 1908 where she encountered Modernist writers such as D.H. Lawrence and...
, both succumbed to the disease.
In 1930 Gertler married Marjorie Greatorex Hodgkinson, which resulted in the birth of a son, Luke Gertler, in 1932. The marriage was often difficult, punctuated by the frequent ill health of both, and with Gertler often suffering from the same feelings of constraint that destroyed his relationships with a number of friends and patrons.
During the 1930s he also became a part-time teacher at the Westminster School of Art
Westminster School of Art
The Westminster School of Art was an art school in Westminster, London. It was located at 18 Tufton Street, Deans Yard, Westminster, and was part of the old Architectural Museum.H. M. Bateman described it in 1903 as...
in order to supplement his intermittent income from painting.
Gertler gassed himself in his London studio in 1939, having attempted suicide on at least one prior occasion in 1936. He was suffering at the time from increasing financial difficulties, his wife had recently left him, he had held a critically derided exhibition at the Lefevre Gallery, he was still depressed over the death of his mother and Carrington's own suicide (both in 1932), and he was filled with fear over the imminent world war. Gertler’s obituary in The Times described his death as ‘a serious loss to British art. Opinions of his work are likely to vary,’ it conceded, ‘but it is safe to say that a considered list of the half-dozen most important painters under fifty working in England would include him'. He was buried at Willesden Jewish cemetery.
Today Gertler's Spitalfields residence is home to the atelier of British tailor Timothy Everest
Timothy Everest
Timothy Everest, MBE is a Welsh bespoke tailor and designer who has, according to Vogue, "dressed some of the world's most famous people". Born in Haverfordwest, Wales, he moved to London in his early twenties to work with innovative Savile Row tailor Tommy Nutter, where he learned the art of...
.