Isabel Alexander

Last updated

Isabel Alexander (1910-1996) was a British artist and illustrator whose work encompassed drawing, water colour, oils, lithography, lino-printing and three-dimensional work, and whose output ranged from socially-engaged documentation of the lives and work of Welsh coalminers, Irish fishermen and English farmworkers through book illustration to landscapes, seascapes and abstracts. [1] Like many other women artists of her generation she struggled during her lifetime for opportunity and recognition in a field that was overwhelmingly male and her significance has only belatedly begun to be acknowledged. [2] [1] [3]

Contents

Biography

Born in Birmingham, Alexander attended King Edward's High School for Girls before training first at Birmingham School of Art (1929–33) and then the Slade School of Fine Arts in London (1934–35), where she won a prize for life drawing. [4] In 1939 she married the Scottish documentary film director Donald Alexander. The couple separated in 1941 after the birth of their son, propelling Isabel Alexander into a decade of financial hardship and lone parenting aggravated by the privations of the war years. Despite this, she managed to combine part-time teaching with working as an art director on documentary, educational, medical and information films and undertaking various book illustration projects and commissions. [1]

In Alexander's early work drawing was paramount, and after her time in documentary film it provided the impetus for an alternative documentary response to people and conditions in the South Wales coalfield during the wartime years before nationalisation, a project in which she was encouraged by film-maker Paul Rotha. Some of the striking portraits and landscapes from her extended visits to Rhondda in 1943, 1944 and 1945 appeared as illustrations to Miner's Day by B. L. Coombes and publications on post-war social and industrial reconstruction. After this, and exploiting her extensive botanical knowledge, she consolidated her work as an illustrator. She wrote and autolithographed The Story of Plant Life, one of the celebrated Puffin Picture Books, and embarked on a range of other illustration projects, developing her lithographic skill with the help of Barnett Freedman. [4] [5]

In 1949 Alexander at last gained financial security as a trainer of art teachers at Saffron Walden Teachers' Training College, and was able to move from work undertaken in part to make ends meet to a succession of phases of creative experimentation. While never forsaking line, she turned from illustration to paint, colour and form on a larger scale, and during the next forty years produced distinctive and often dramatic landscapes and seascapes interspersed by portraiture and forays into abstraction. The result was an impressive and remarkably varied body of sketches, studies, drawings, paintings and prints. [4] [6]

Alexander travelled extensively in Britain and continental Europe, though during the latter part of her life spent more and more time in Scotland's Hebridean islands. After attending the London International Surrealist Exhibition in 1936 and Hitler's notorious Exhibition of 'Degenerate Art' in Munich in 1937, she became an avid and lifelong exhibition-goer, retaining a strong international outlook and a particular interest in European and American modernism. [2] [4] The sheer variety of her work, and the influences she documented in her publication Sources of 20th Century Art, run counter to later attempts to pigeon-hole her as a typical small-scale English landscape painter. [7]

During her lifetime there were 36 public exhibitions of Alexander's work, 27 of them joint and nine solo. Most of her works are in private collections, mainly in Britain but also in Australia, the United States and China. There are also public holdings at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea, the Mercer Art Gallery in Harrogate, Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery in Carlisle, the University of Cambridge and – as result of her submissions to the Pictures for Schools exhibitions at the Royal Academy during the 1960s and 1970s – several schools and local councils.

In 2017, three events combined to renew and extend interest in Alexander's work: a major biographical and artistic book-length study by Janet McKenzie; [4] a retrospective exhibition at the Mercer Gallery in Harrogate, [8] and the addition of images of over 70 of her works to the Bridgeman Images international on-line art library. [2] Other exhibitions are currently being planned.

In 2021, over 70 of Alexander’s Rhondda drawings, lithographs and paintings were brought together for a new edition of the B.L.Coombes classic Miner’s Day (for which she had provided the original illustrations in 1945).  In the new book, edited and introduced by Peter Wakelin, Coombes’s text and Alexander’s images are given equal treatment. [9]  Many of the 1940s Rhondda images were featured in the 2024 book Rhondda Portraits, this time in combination with a 1944 commentary by Donald Alexander which was discovered only recently in his archive at the National Library of Scotland. [10]

Publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barbara Nessim</span> American artist, illustrator and educator

Barbara Nessim is an American artist, illustrator, and educator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isabel Bishop</span> American painter and graphic artist. (1902–1988)

Isabel Bishop was an American painter and graphic artist. Bishop studied under Kenneth Hayes Miller at the Art Students League of New York, where she would later become an instructor. She was most notable for her scenes of everyday life in Manhattan, as a member of the loosely-defined ‘Fourteenth Street School’ of artists, grouped in that precinct. Union Square features prominently in her work, which mainly depicts female figures. Bishop’s paintings won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, among other distinctions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laura Wheeler Waring</span> American artist and educator

Laura Wheeler Waring was an American artist and educator, most renowned for her realistic portraits, landscapes, still-life, and well-known African American portraitures she made during the Harlem Renaissance. She was one of the few African American artists in France, a turning point of her career and profession where she attained widespread attention, exhibited in Paris, won awards, and spent the next 30 years teaching art at Cheyney University in Pennsylvania.

Eileen Cooper is a British artist, known primarily as a painter and printmaker.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isabel Nicholas</span> British painter, scenery and costume designer

Isabel Rawsthorne, also known at various times as Isabel Delmer and Isabel Lambert, was a British painter, scenery and costume designer, and occasional artists' model. During the Second World War she worked in black propaganda. She was part of an artistic bohemian society that included Jacob Epstein, Alberto Giacometti and Francis Bacon.

Marjorie Helen Arnfield, was an English artist who specialised in both industrial and rural landscapes, painting in oil, acrylic and watercolour. Her landscapes, particularly her paintings of Provence and Spain, are characterised by vivid colours and an impressionistic style. In an interview in the magazine Artists & Illustrators in 1998, Arnfield described her palette of colours, which included ochres, burnt siennas, cadmium, viridian, reds and blues, as "colours that sing".

Anita E. Kunz, OC, DFA, RCA is a Canadian-born artist and illustrator. She was the first woman and first Canadian to have a solo exhibit at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

Bert Lewis Coombes , originally Bertie Lewis Coombs Griffiths, was an English-born writer. Coombes moved to Resolven from England before World War I and spent most of his working life in the coal mines of the South Wales coalfield, which provided the subject matter for much of his writing.

Susan Dorothea White is an Australian artist and author. She is a narrative artist and her work concerns the natural world and human situation, increasingly incorporating satire and irony to convey her concern for human rights and equality. She is the author of Draw Like da Vinci (2006).

Roland Wakelin was a New Zealand-born Australian painter and teacher.

John Stanton Ward CBE was an English portrait artist, landscape painter and illustrator. His subjects included British royalty and celebrities.

Ray Mutimer is a British illustrator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alice Barber Stephens</span> American painter

Alice Barber Stephens was an American painter and engraver, best remembered for her illustrations. Her work regularly appeared in magazines such as Scribner's Monthly, Harper's Weekly, and The Ladies Home Journal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Percy Leason</span> Australian artist (1889–1959)

Percy Alexander Leason was an Australian political cartoonist and artist who was a major figure in the Australian tonalist movement. As a painter and commercial artist his works span two continents.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yvonne Drewry</span> English artist and art teacher

Yvonne Drewry was an English artist and art teacher, noted for her work in and around Suffolk.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laura Coombs Hills</span> American artist and illustrator

Laura Coombs Hills (1859–1952) was an American artist and illustrator who specialized in watercolor and pastel still life paintings, especially of flowers, and miniature portrait paintings on ivory. She became the first miniature painter elected to the Society of American Artists, and was a founder of the American Society of Miniature Painters. She also worked as a designer and illustrated children's books for authors such as Kate Douglas Wiggin and Anna M. Pratt.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Heindel</span> British painter

Robert Heindel was an American painter, illustrator, and stage designer best known for his paintings of dance and performing arts. Heindel created over 1300 paintings and drawings of dance and performing arts during a twenty-five year period in the late twentieth century. He was described as the best painter of dance of his time.

Hilda Rue Wilkinson Brown (1894–1981) was an artist and teacher from Washington, D.C. Brown was involved in art education, developing curriculum that challenged the typical mimetic approach of teaching in favor of more individual creativity. The focus of Brown's life was her career as an educator, but she was also a prolific artist in her own right. She made illustrations for African American publications such as The Brownie's Book and Crisis magazine. She was also a painter and printmaker. Her prints are included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of art and the Art Institute of Chicago.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Holroyd</span> British painter (1821–1904)

Thomas Holroyd was an English portrait and landscape painter working in Harrogate, North Riding of Yorkshire, England. Before his marriage he undertook painting tours to the United States, Canada, Europe, Egypt, Russia and the Holy Land. Returning to Harrogate, he painted portraits of the local worthies there. He shared responsibility for the successful photography business T & J Holroyd with his brother James, and continued to run the business after his brother died. Holroyd was a founding member of Harrogate Liberal Club.

Ludwik Dutkiewicz was an Australian artist born in Poland. He was born in Stara Sil, Ukraine on 2 February 1921. He won the 1953 and 1954 Cornell Prize.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Isabel Alexander: artist and illustrator". Isart Press. Retrieved 16 February 2017.
  2. 1 2 3 "Now representing: Isabel Alexander". bridgemanimages.com. Retrieved 16 February 2017.
  3. "Some talk of Alexander". The Northern Echo. 16 January 2017. Retrieved 16 February 2017.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 McKenzie, Janet (2017). Isabel Alexander: artist and illustrator. Isart Press. ISBN   9781527203624.
  5. "Penguin First Editions :: Early First Edition Penguin Books :: penguinfirsteditions.com". penguinfirsteditions.com. Retrieved 16 February 2017.
  6. "Isabel Alexander: Creative spirit in Harrogate". Yorkshire Evening Post. Retrieved 16 February 2017.
  7. Alexander, Isabel (1996). Sources of 20th Century Art. Mimeo.
  8. Cryer, Clare. "Exhibitions at the Mercer Art Gallery". Government of the United Kingdom. Retrieved 16 February 2017.
  9. 1 2 "Miner's Day: B. L. Coombes, with Rhondda Images by Isabel Alexander (Hardback)". Parthian Books. Retrieved 29 October 2021.
  10. 1 2 Press, Grey Mare. "Rhondda Portraits: Images by Isabel Alexander, Commentary by Donald Alexander". Grey Mare Press. Retrieved 5 August 2024.
  11. "Bridgeman Education". Bridgeman Education. Retrieved 16 February 2017.

Further reading