Allerley Glossop (1870–1955) was a South African artist known particularly for her landscape and pastoral scenes.
Biography
Glossop was born Alice Glossop into a middle-class family in
Twickenham, in West London, the daughter of George Glossop, the vicar of Twickenham,
[''Who's Who in Natal'', 1933, p. 103] and his wife Eliza.
Glossop studied painting at the
Slade School of Fine Art in London under
Charles Holroyd
Sir Charles Holroyd (9 April 1861 – 17 November 1917) was an English artist and curator. He was Keeper of the Tate from 1897 to 1906, and Director of the National Gallery from 1906 to 1916.
Biography
Early years
Charles Holroyd was born ...
and modelling under
George Frampton, and studied under
William Mouat Loudan
William is a masculine given name of Norman French origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conques ...
at the
Westminster School of Art.
[''Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon'', 1992, p. 225] She also worked under
Arthur Elsley
Arthur John Elsley (1860–1952) was an English painter of the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, famous for his idyllic genre works, genre scenes of playful children and their pets. He achieved great popularity during his life and much ...
and
Solomon Solomon,
and taught at their short-lived art school, the Sphinx Studio, until it closed in 1900.
[''Into The Light, Works by KwaZulu-Natal Women Artists'', Tatham Art Gallery]
Glossop moved to
Cape Colony in 1900, farming and painting first at
Klapmuts
Klapmuts is the name of both a hill, and a town which formed at its foot. They are located in Cape Winelands District Municipality in the Western Cape province of South Africa.
Klapmuts town
Klapmuts is a little town just off the R45 road (South ...
in the Western Cape, and was an active member of the South African Society of Artists (SASA), serving on the Society's Council between 1902 and 1906.
She habitually transgressed the gender roles assigned to a single white woman in colonial South Africa by dressing in men's clothing (she was known to her close friends as "Joe"), wearing a pith helmet, smoking a pipe and venturing alone into rural areas to paint.
[''Allerley Glossop'', South African History Online] Between 1902 and 1917 she farmed in
Wellington, Western Cape, and in 1917 moved to
Johannesburg.
Glossop was a friend of the artist
Madge Tennent
Madge Tennent (June 22, 1889 – February 5, 1972) was a naturalized American artist, born in England, raised in South Africa, and trained in France. She ranks among the most accomplished and globally renowned artists ever to have lived and wor ...
, who portrayed her as "Jill of all trades, and master of most of them... who, if she was busy, would slip a delicately beaded white chiffon dinner dress over her riding trousers and high leather boots, to arrive at a dinner party with a riding crop instead of a bag."
[''Autobiography of an Unarrived Artist'', 1949, p46] Tennent states that after the First World War Glossop bartered her paintings for butter, flour and eggs in order to provide her farm hands with extra food; and describes her as a "spartan", "self-possessed by nature and training", who "loved freedom... a slim intrepid woman, with her wide human interests, and zest for work... poised squarely in the path of life, like a bright eagle ready to fly the wind against any wrong done to the young, weak or innocent".
[
In 1925 she moved to Lion's River in kwaZulu-Natal, and worked from there until her death in 1955.
Glossop exhibited in South Africa and abroad, including:
1902–1903 SASA annual exhibitions in Cape Town;
1910 exhibition of the South African Fine Arts Association, Cape Town;
1917–1919 SASA annual art exhibitions, Cape Town;
1920–1924 South African Academy of Art annual exhibition, Johannesburg;
1924 British Empire Exhibition, Wembley;
1924 SASA annual exhibition, Cape Town;
1935 exhibition of contemporary art, South African National Gallery;
1936 SASA annual exhibition, Cape Town;
and the 1937 exhibition of contemporary art, South African National Gallery.]
References
Bibliography
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Glossop, Allerley
1870 births
1955 deaths
20th-century British women artists
20th-century South African women artists
19th-century British women artists
Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art
Alumni of the Westminster School of Art
Artists from London
People from Twickenham
British emigrants to the Cape Colony