Gerald Brockhurst

Born Birmingham, 31 Oct 1890; died Franklin Lakes, NJ, 4 May 1978.

English painter and printmaker. He attended the Birmingham School of Art, where he showed a prodigious talent for drawing. In 1907 he entered the Royal Academy Schools, London, attaining, among other awards, the Gold Medal and Travelling Scholarship in 1913; the latter took him to Paris and Italy, where he studied the works of the Italian 15th-century painters. Piero della Francesca and Leonardo remained important influences. From 1915 to 1919 Brockhurst and his first wife, Anaïs, lived in Ireland, where he was introduced by Oliver St John Gogarty to Augustus John and his circle. In 1919 the Chenil Galleries, London, held the first significant exhibition of Brockhurst’s work, and the artist returned to England.

During the 1920s Brockhurst embarked on a career as an etcher, achieving an exceptionally high degree of technical virtuosity in a competitive field. His subjects were almost exclusively female portraits, with Anaïs as his model (e.g. The Dancer, 1925). By 1930 he had returned to painting, and, working with a new model, Dorette, who became his second wife, he proceeded to establish himself as one of the most fashionable and successful British portrait painters active in the inter-war period. His sitters included Merle Oberon (exh. RA 1937; USA, priv. col.), Marlene Dietrich (exh. RA 1939; London, priv. col.) and the Duchess of Windsor (1939; Paris, priv. col.). In 1939, at the height of his success, Brockhurst moved to America, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life. The best of his work of the 1920s and 1930s, such as the etching Adolescence (1933), is marked by an uncompromising technical perfection and overt classicism informed by a highly personal intensity.

Anne L. Goodchild. "Brockhurst, Gerald Leslie." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T011442 (accessed May 1, 2012).