Edna Clarke Hall 1879 – 1979
Edna Clarke Hall (née Edna Waugh, from 1932 Lady Clarke Hall)
Watercolourist, etcher, lithographer, draughtsman.
29 June 1879 – 16 November 1979
Education
Unhappy at school so educated at home.
1893 Entered the Slade School of Art aged 14 studying there until 1898 winning prizes for drawing and composition. When asked by her tutor Henry Tonks if she was going to be the next Edward Burne-Jones, the famous Pre-Raphaelite painter, she said ‘No’, she would be ‘A first Edna Waugh’.Edna Clarke Hall, ‘The Heritage of Ages’, Unpublished manuscript, n.d. Tate archive and library, 15. quoted Unfulfilled Potential: The Forgotten Women Artists of the Slade School (pallant.org.uk)
1897 Won the Summer Composition Prize at the Slade.
1898 Won a Slade scholarship.
Some Key Achievements and Interests to WW2
Won prizes and scholarships.
1899 Work accepted at the New English Art Club.
1902 Moved to Great House, a farmhouse which inspired her. Started a series of illustrations of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë for which she became well-known.
1907 The Slade Record features Edna as a major artist.
1914 First one-woman show at the Chenil Gallery in Chelsea which was successful.
1924, 1926, 1930, 1934 Exhibited at the Redfern Gallery.
1939 Retrospective Exhibition at Manchester City Art Gallery.
Issues
Loveless marriage at the age of 19, husband critical and unsupportive of her art expecting her to assume the ‘traditional’ role of wife and mother. This resulted in her art becoming intensely personal and private.
Suffered from depression and loneliness. In 1919 experienced a breakdown but her husband then approved of her taking a studio in London in which to work.
Suffered from arthritis in her hands which affected her work at different periods of her life and removal to warmer climates. Severe arthritis eventually caused her to stop painting in 1950s.
Much of her work was destroyed in the Blitz along with her studio.
Connection to Bloomsbury
British Museum where she studied the Old Masters in the Print Room.
Female networks
Gwen John, Ida Nettleship, niece Mary Fernley Sander, Ursula Tyrwhitt.
Works
Now in the Tate, V&A, Manchester Art Gallery and other British art galleries.
Further reading
Edna Clarke Hall’s watercolours – Tate Etc | Tate
Thomas, Alison, Portraits of Women: Gwen John and Her Forgotten Contemporaries, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996