Mark Gertler (artist)

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Mark Gertler (9 December 1891 – 23 June 1939) was a British painter. His early life and his relationship with Dora Carrington were the inspiration for Gilbert Cannan's novel Mendel.^[1] The character Loerke from D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love^[2] and Gombauld from Aldous Huxley's Crome Yellow were based on him.^[3]

Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 3 Bibliography 4 Footnotes

[edit] Early life

Gertler was born in Spitalfields, London, the youngest child of Jewish immigrants Louis Gertler and Kate "Golda" Berenbaum.^[4] He had four older siblings: Deborah (b. 1881), Harry (b. 1882), Sophie (b. 1883) and Jacob "Jack" (b. 1886). In 1892 his mother returned with the children (including Mark) to her native city, Przemyśl, Austria-Hungary (now Poland), where his parents worked as innkeepers.^[5] Though Louis was popular with his customers, mainly Austrian soldiers, the inn was a failure.^[6] 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.^[7] However, this venture also failed and his family never joined him in America. Instead, he returned to England and had his family join him in London in 1896.^[8]

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.^[9] He disliked his work there and rarely spoke of it in later years.^[10] 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.^[11] The application was successful. Upon the advice of the prominent Jewish artist William Rothenstein, in 1908 he enrolled at the Slade School of Art. During the four years that he spent at the Slade, Gertler was a contemporary of Paul Nash, Edward Wadsworth, Christopher Nevinson and Stanley Spencer, among others.

It was also during his time at Slade that Gertler met the painter Dora Carrington, whom he pursued relentlessly for many years.^[12] His obsessive love for Carrington is detailed in his published letters (see bibliography below) and in Sarah MacDougall's book Mark Gertler. It is a subject also briefly touched upon 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.^[13] He had been so distraught when he learned of Carrington's marriage that he purchased a revolver and threatened to commit suicide.^[14]

[edit] Career

Gertler was patronised by Lady Ottoline Morrell,^[15] through whom he became acquainted with the Bloomsbury Group. She introduced him to Walter Sickert, the nominal leader of the Camden Town Group.^[16] Gertler was soon enjoying great 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.

His later works developed a sometimes very harsh edge to them, influenced by his increasing ill health. In 1920 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis,^[17] 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.

Gertler married Marjorie Hodgkinson in 1930,^[18] which resulted in the birth of a son, Luke, in 1932.^[19] 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. ^[20]

Gertler committed suicide in 1939, having attempted to do so on at least one prior occasion. He was suffering at the time from increasing financial difficulties, his wife had just left him, he had held a critically derided exhibition, 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.^[21]

[edit] Bibliography

• Carrington, N.(1965) Mark Gertler: Selected Letters, with an introduction by Quentin Bell, London
• Mark Gertler: The Early and the Late Years, exhibition catatalogue, London, Ben Uri Art Gallery, 1982
• MacDougall, Sarah (2002). Mark Gertler. London, John Murray, ISBN 0-7195-5799-2.
• Woodeson, John (1972). Mark Gertler: biography of a painter, 1891-1939. London, Sidgwick and Jackson. ISBN 0-283-97831-7.
• Woodeson, John (1971). Mark Gertler, 1891–1939, exhibition catalogue, Colchester, Minories

[edit] Footnotes

1. ^ MacDougall, S. (2002).: "Mark Gertler", page 140. London: John Murray Pub. Ltd.
2. ^ MacDougall, S. (2002).: "Mark Gertler", page 106. London: John Murray Pub. Ltd.
3. ^ MacDougall, S. (2002).: "Mark Gertler", page 155. London: John Murray Pub. Ltd.
4. ^ MacDougall, S. (2002).: "Mark Gertler", page 3. London: John Murray Pub. Ltd.
5. ^ MacDougall, S. (2002).: "Mark Gertler", page 5. London: John Murray Pub. Ltd.
6. ^ MacDougall, S. (2002).: "Mark Gertler", page 5. London: John Murray Pub. Ltd.
7. ^ MacDougall, S. (2002).: "Mark Gertler", page 5. London: John Murray Pub. Ltd.
8. ^ MacDougall, S. (2002).: "Mark Gertler", page 6. London: John Murray Pub. Ltd.
9. ^ MacDougall, S. (2002).: "Mark Gertler", page 24. London: John Murray Pub. Ltd.
10. ^ MacDougall, S. (2002).: "Mark Gertler", page 24. London: John Murray Pub. Ltd.
11. ^ MacDougall, S. (2002).: "Mark Gertler", pages 25-27. London: John Murray Pub. Ltd.
12. ^ MacDougall, S. (2002).: "Mark Gertler", page 66. London: John Murray Pub. Ltd.
13. ^ MacDougall, S. (2002).: "Mark Gertler", page 163. London: John Murray Pub. Ltd.
14. ^ MacDougall, S. (2002).: "Mark Gertler", page 261. London: John Murray Pub. Ltd.
15. ^ MacDougall, S. (2002).: "Mark Gertler", pages 96-98. London: John Murray Pub. Ltd.
16. ^ MacDougall, S. (2002).: "Mark Gertler", page 98. London: John Murray Pub. Ltd.
17. ^ MacDougall, S. (2002).: "Mark Gertler", page 92. London: John Murray Pub. Ltd.
18. ^ MacDougall, S. (2002).: "Mark Gertler", pages 264-267. London: John Murray Pub. Ltd.
19. ^ MacDougall, S. (2002).: "Mark Gertler", page 279. London: John Murray Pub. Ltd.
20. ^ MacDougall, S. (2002).: "Mark Gertler", page 266. London: John Murray Pub. Ltd.
21. ^ MacDougall, S. (2002).: "Mark Gertler", page 325. London: John Murray Pub. Ltd.