Isabel Rawsthorne (born Isabel Nicholas, 10 July 1912 – 27 January 1992), also known at various times as Isabel Delmer and Isabel Lambert,
was a British
painter
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ...
,
scenery and
costume
Costume is the distinctive style of dress or cosmetic of an individual or group that reflects class, gender, profession, ethnicity, nationality, activity or epoch. In short costume is a cultural visual of the people.
The term also was tradition ...
designer, and occasional
artists' model. During the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
she worked in
black propaganda
Black propaganda is a form of propaganda intended to create the impression that it was created by those it is supposed to discredit. Black propaganda contrasts with gray propaganda, which does not identify its source, as well as white propagand ...
. She was part of and flourished in an artistic
bohemian
Bohemian or Bohemians may refer to:
*Anything of or relating to Bohemia
Beer
* National Bohemian, a brand brewed by Pabst
* Bohemian, a brand of beer brewed by Molson Coors
Culture and arts
* Bohemianism, an unconventional lifestyle, origin ...
society that included
Jacob Epstein
Sir Jacob Epstein (10 November 1880 – 21 August 1959) was an American-British sculptor who helped pioneer modern sculpture. He was born in the United States, and moved to Europe in 1902, becoming a British subject in 1911.
He often produce ...
,
Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti (, , ; 10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman and printmaker. Beginning in 1922, he lived and worked mainly in Paris but regularly visited his hometown Borgonovo to see his family and ...
and
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...
.
Life
Born Isabel Nicholas, the daughter of a
master mariner
A master mariner is a licensed mariner who holds the highest grade of seafarer qualification; namely, an unlimited master's license. Such a license is labelled ''unlimited'' because it has no limits on the tonnage, power, or geographic location o ...
, in the East End of London, she was raised in
Liverpool
Liverpool is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the List of English districts by population, 10th largest English district by population and its E ...
and the
Wirral.
She studied at the
Liverpool College of Art, won a scholarship to the
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its pur ...
in London and spent two years in the studio of the sculptor
Jacob Epstein
Sir Jacob Epstein (10 November 1880 – 21 August 1959) was an American-British sculptor who helped pioneer modern sculpture. He was born in the United States, and moved to Europe in 1902, becoming a British subject in 1911.
He often produce ...
. She was the mother of Epstein's son Jackie (born 1934), and briefly assumed the name "Margaret Epstein" (the name of Epstein's wife) in order to register Jackie's birth.
Rawsthorne's first show was a sell-out, and by September 1934 she was living in Paris. She worked with
André Derain
André Derain (, ; 10 June 1880 – 8 September 1954) was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse.
Biography
Early years
Derain was born in 1880 in Chatou, Yvelines, Île-de-France, just outside Paris. In ...
, and lived and travelled for a time with
Balthus
Balthasar Klossowski de Rola (February 29, 1908 – February 18, 2001), known as Balthus, was a Polish-French modern artist. He is known for his erotically charged images of pubescent girls, but also for the refined, dreamlike quality of his image ...
and his wife. She was painted several times by Derain and
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
.
In 1936 she married her first husband, the foreign correspondent for the ''
Daily Express
The ''Daily Express'' is a national daily United Kingdom middle-market newspaper printed in tabloid format. Published in London, it is the flagship of Express Newspapers, owned by publisher Reach plc. It was first published as a broadsheet ...
'',
Sefton Delmer.
The travel, parties and luxurious apartment in the
Place Vendôme
The Place Vendôme (), earlier known as Place Louis-le-Grand, and also as Place Internationale, is a square in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France, located to the north of the Tuileries Gardens and east of the Église de la Madeleine. It i ...
, never replaced her
Left Bank
In geography, a bank is the land alongside a body of water. Different structures are referred to as ''banks'' in different fields of geography, as follows.
In limnology (the study of inland waters), a stream bank or river bank is the terra ...
life, however; and most days she made the long walk there and back. A lifelong
socialist
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...
, she visited Spain while Delmer was reporting the
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlism, Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebeli ...
.
Rawsthorne was at the heart of the Paris avant-garde and became involved with
Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti (, , ; 10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman and printmaker. Beginning in 1922, he lived and worked mainly in Paris but regularly visited his hometown Borgonovo to see his family and ...
.
[ They shared many intellectual enthusiasms and a commitment to a modern form of representational painting. Her characteristically astonished gaze and defiant stance can be seen in the new kind of etiolated figure that Giacometti developed over the next decade. The onset of World War II forced Rawsthorne to leave Paris. She relinquished at least one ticket out and did not flee until the day the Germans arrived on 14 June 1940.
She remained with Delmer for the first part of the war, but they divorced in 1947. She maintained indirect links with France by working in intelligence and ]black propaganda
Black propaganda is a form of propaganda intended to create the impression that it was created by those it is supposed to discredit. Black propaganda contrasts with gray propaganda, which does not identify its source, as well as white propagand ...
for the Political Warfare Executive. During the Italian Campaign, she edited the magazine ''Il Mondo Libero''. About this time, 1943–44, she encountered Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...
within the arty set around the BBC, although they probably did not become intimate until a few years later. Rawsthorne's closest wartime friends appear to have been John Rayner (typographer, journalist and soldier ( SOE), the photographer Joan Leigh Fermor
Joan Elizabeth Eyres Monsell, Lady Leigh Fermor, formerly Rayner (5 February 1912 – 4 June 2003) was an English photographer and wife of author Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor.
Early life
She was born Joan Elizabeth Eyres Monsell in Dumbleton, Worc ...
(then Rayner), the Schiaparelli model Anna Phillips, and the composer Elizabeth Lutyens
Agnes Elisabeth Lutyens, CBE (9 July 190614 April 1983) was an English composer.
Early life and education
Elisabeth Lutyens was born in London on 9 July 1906. She was one of the five children of Lady Emily Bulwer-Lytton (1874–1964), a memb ...
, but her social life encompassed many others including the poets Louis MacNeice
Frederick Louis MacNeice (12 September 1907 – 3 September 1963) was an Irish poet and playwright, and a member of the Auden Group, which also included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. MacNeice's body of work was widely ...
and Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems " Do not go gentle into that good night" and " And death shall have no dominion", as well as the "play for voices" ''Und ...
(she shared working quarters with Thomas), Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was a British writer who is best known for his postwar ''James Bond'' series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., an ...
, and old friends from Paris, Peter Rose Pulham, Peter Watson (editor of the journal ''Horizon'') and the spy Donald Maclean.
Returning to Paris in 1945, Rawsthorne was re-united with Giacometti and lived with him for a short while, but they never married. She continued to be involved in the evolution of the figurative style associated with Existentialism
Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and val ...
. She socialised with Simone de Beauvoir
Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (, ; ; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, and even ...
, Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and lite ...
, Jean Wahl
Jean André Wahl (; 25 May 188819 June 1974) was a French philosopher.
Early career
Wahl was educated at the École Normale Supérieure. He was a professor at the Sorbonne from 1936 to 1967, broken by World War II. He was in the U.S. from 1942 ...
and other intellectuals, and for a time lived a few doors away from the headquarters of the journal ''Les Temps Modernes
''Les Temps Modernes'' (''Modern Times'') is a French journal, founded by Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It first issue was published in October 1945. It was named after the 1936 film by Charlie Chaplin.
'' ...
''. She also entertained the philosopher A. J. Ayer in Paris, saw Eduardo Paolozzi
Sir Eduardo Luigi Paolozzi (, ; 7 March 1924 – 22 April 2005) was a Scottish artist, known for his sculpture and graphic works. He is widely considered to be one of the pioneers of pop art.
Early years
Eduardo Paolozzi was born on 7 March ...
and Bacon, and had relationships with Georges Bataille
Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille (; ; 10 September 1897 – 9 July 1962) was a French philosopher and intellectual working in philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels ...
and the composer René Leibowitz
René Leibowitz (; 17 February 1913 – 29 August 1972) was a Polish, later naturalised French, composer, conductor, music theorist and teacher. He was historically significant in promoting the music of the Second Viennese School in Paris after ...
. In the winter of 1946/7 she withdrew to modest lodgings in the Indre
Indre (; oc, Endre) is a landlocked department in central France named after the river Indre. The inhabitants of the department are known as the ''Indriens'' (masculine; ) and ''Indriennes'' (feminine; ). Indre is part of the current administ ...
to work alone. The composer Constant Lambert
Leonard Constant Lambert (23 August 190521 August 1951) was a British composer, conductor, and author. He was the founder and music director of the Royal Ballet, and (alongside Ninette de Valois and Frederick Ashton) he was a major figure in th ...
visited her in 1947 and they married later that year.[Lloyd, Stephen. ''Constant Lambert: Beyond The Rio Grande''. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2014. ]
Following her second marriage, her base became London. Her art world associates, including Bacon and Lucian Freud
Lucian Michael Freud (; 8 December 1922 – 20 July 2011) was a British painter and draughtsman, specialising in figurative art, and is known as one of the foremost 20th-century English portraitists. He was born in Berlin, the son of Jewis ...
, created a potent mix with a glitzier musical set, including the Sitwells, Lutyens, Frederick Ashton
Sir Frederick William Mallandaine Ashton (17 September 190418 August 1988) was a British ballet dancer and choreographer. He also worked as a director and choreographer in opera, film and revue.
Determined to be a dancer despite the opposit ...
, Margot Fonteyn
Dame Margaret Evelyn de Arias DBE (''née'' Hookham; 18 May 191921 February 1991), known by the stage name Margot Fonteyn, was an English ballerina. She spent her entire career as a dancer with the Royal Ballet (formerly the Sadler's Wells ...
and Alan Rawsthorne. From 1949, she and Bacon showcased their figurative brand of modern art at the Hanover Gallery
The Hanover Gallery was an art gallery in London. It was opened in June 1948 by the German art expert Erica Brausen and financier and art collector Arthur Jeffress at 32A St. George's Street, W1, and closed on 31 March 1973. It was named afte ...
and she exhibited in group shows organised by the ICA and the British Council
The British Council is a British organisation specialising in international cultural and educational opportunities. It works in over 100 countries: promoting a wider knowledge of the United Kingdom and the English language (and the Welsh lan ...
. She began a career as a designer for the Royal Ballet
The Royal Ballet is a British internationally renowned classical ballet company, based at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, England. The largest of the five major ballet companies in Great Britain, the Royal Ballet was founded in ...
and the opera at Covent Garden and Sadler's Wells
Sadler's Wells Theatre is a performing arts venue in Clerkenwell, London, England located on Rosebery Avenue next to New River Head. The present-day theatre is the sixth on the site since 1683. It consists of two performance spaces: a 1,500-seat ...
.[
Lambert died in 1951 and Rawsthorne returned to Paris to paint. She continued to see Giacometti, but eventually married Alan Rawsthorne in 1951. They moved to a thatched cottage in rural ]Essex
Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Grea ...
with a purpose built studio, near friends such as the politician Tom Driberg
Thomas Edward Neil Driberg, Baron Bradwell (22 May 1905 – 12 August 1976) was a British journalist, politician, High Anglican churchman and possible Soviet spy, who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1942 to 1955, and again from 195 ...
, poet Randall Swingler
Randall Carline Swingler MM (28 May 1909 – 19 June 1967) was an English poet, writing extensively in the 1930s in the communist interest.
Early life and education
His was a prosperous upper middle class Anglican family in Aldershot, with an ...
, artists Michael Ayrton
Michael Ayrton (20 February 1921 – 16 November 1975)T. G. Rosenthal, "Ayrton , Michael (1921–1975)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2008accessed 24 Jan 2015/ref> was a British arti ...
and Biddy and Roy Noakes; Bacon had a house not far away. Six of Bacon's portraits of Rawsthorne were shown in his 1967 show, including ''Portrait of Isabel Rawsthorne''. In all, between 1964 and 1970 he painted 14 images of her, including five triptychs. Giacometti died in 1966, Alan Rawsthorne in 1971, and Isabel Rawsthorne in 1992; Bacon outlived her by a few months. Apart from visits to London and Paris, Africa, Greece and Australia, and a short period in Cambridge (1972-3), she lived in the cottage for forty years - half of her life. She raised geese, a nod to her interest in Konrad Lorenz
Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (; 7 November 1903 – 27 February 1989) was an Austrian zoologist, ethologist, and ornithologist. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch. He is often regarde ...
, and became involved in the emergent environmentalist
An environmentalist is a person who is concerned with and/or advocates for the protection of the environment. An environmentalist can be considered a supporter of the goals of the environmental movement, "a political and ethical movement that se ...
movement. She and her last husband are buried in Thaxted churchyard.
Career
Rawsthorne's work was dominated by the body, primarily paintings of figures and animals. Her father supplied exotic creatures to British zoos and as a child she took to drawing these and other wildlife. Later she became interested in natural history and new ideas in Anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...
, Ecology
Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overl ...
and Ethology
Ethology is the scientific study of animal behaviour, usually with a focus on behaviour under natural conditions, and viewing behaviour as an evolutionarily adaptive trait. Behaviourism as a term also describes the scientific and objecti ...
, such as those of her friends Michel Leiris
Julien Michel Leiris (; 20 April 1901 in Paris – 30 September 1990 in Saint-Hilaire, Essonne) was a French surrealist writer and ethnographer. Part of the Surrealist group in Paris, Leiris became a key member of the College of Sociology with ...
and Georges Bataille
Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille (; ; 10 September 1897 – 9 July 1962) was a French philosopher and intellectual working in philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels ...
. These inform the skeletal bird, fish and bat figures of her 1949 Hanover Gallery show, the haunting ape series, and her last, large ''Migration'' pictures.[
Rawsthorne's two years with Epstein and their mutual enthusiasm for Rodin developed her ideas about ]vitalism
Vitalism is a belief that starts from the premise that "living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things." Wher ...
and movement, but she never became part of British Neo-Romanticism. In Paris she continuing her studies of the nude at the liberal Académie de la Grande Chaumière
The Académie de la Grande Chaumière is an art school in the Montparnasse district of Paris, France.
History
The school was founded in 1904 by the Catalan painter Claudio Castelucho on the rue de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, near the Acad ...
. She associated with Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti (, , ; 10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, Drafter, draftsman and Printmaking, printmaker. Beginning in 1922, he lived and worked mainly in Paris but regularly visited his hometown Borgonovo, ...
, Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara (; ; born Samuel or Samy Rosenstock, also known as S. Samyro; – 25 December 1963) was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, comp ...
and the Surrealist circle but was committed to a figurative form of modern art which she called 'Quintessentialism'. She maintained connections to an alternative circle of representational artists including Francis Gruber and Peter Rose Pulham, as well as Balthus
Balthasar Klossowski de Rola (February 29, 1908 – February 18, 2001), known as Balthus, was a Polish-French modern artist. He is known for his erotically charged images of pubescent girls, but also for the refined, dreamlike quality of his image ...
and Derain. Her outlook was anti-idealist, intellectual and, like Giacometti, she saw painting from the real world as a challenge that could never be fully met.[
During the 1940s Rawsthorne adapted animal, archaic and pre-historic imagery into motifs of birth, sexuality and death. She did not share the fashionable interest in the formal properties of ]Oceanic
Oceanic may refer to:
*Of or relating to the ocean
*Of or relating to Oceania
**Oceanic climate
**Oceanic languages
**Oceanic person or people, also called "Pacific Islander(s)"
Places
* Oceanic, British Columbia, a settlement on Smith Island, ...
or Archaic art. Instead, she investigated the uncanny 'presence' achieved by ancient figures, especially Egyptian sculpture. She also studied this quality in Early Renaissance
Renaissance art (1350 – 1620 AD) is the painting, sculpture, and decorative arts of the period of European history known as the Renaissance, which emerged as a distinct style in Italy in about AD 1400, in parallel with developments which occ ...
paintings, and in the evidence of the body itself, X-rays, skeletons, figures and animals she found in the countryside or drew in London Zoo.
In the 1950s and '60s her explorations of the embattled origins of art and life were adapted into designs for the ballet and opera, such as a Minoan
The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age Aegean civilization on the island of Crete and other Aegean Islands, whose earliest beginnings were from 3500BC, with the complex urban civilization beginning around 2000BC, and then declining from 1450B ...
Tiresias
In Greek mythology, Tiresias (; grc, Τειρεσίας, Teiresías) was a blind prophet of Apollo in Thebes, famous for clairvoyance and for being transformed into a woman for seven years. He was the son of the shepherd Everes and the nym ...
created for the ballet
Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of ...
of the same name premiered in 1951 at Covent Garden, the last work of her husband Constant Lambert.[ She continued her studies of the body, in motion this time, in the practice rooms of the Royal Ballet. Over the next twenty years she painted images of Fonteyn, Rudolph Nureyev, ]Antoinette Sibley
Dame Antoinette Sibley (born 27 February 1939) is a British prima ballerina. She joined the Royal Ballet from the Royal Ballet School in 1956 and became a soloist in 1960. She was celebrated for her partnership with Anthony Dowell. After her ...
and other dancers which developed a vivacious new language of movement. In 1961 she worked from the figure and landscape in Nigeria
Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...
shortly after its Independence
Independence is a condition of a person, nation, country, or state in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the statu ...
, at the Zaria Art School with the artist Clifford Frith (grandson of William Powell Frith
William Powell Frith (9 January 1819 – 2 November 1909) was an English painter specialising in genre subjects and panoramic narrative works of life in the Victorian era. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1853, presenting ''The Sleep ...
).
Rawsthorne explored the ambiguities of appearance through the theme of the double – for instance, reflections, such as those seen in the practice room mirrors. During the late 1960s and '70s, the deaths of Giacometti and Rawsthorne prompted her to refine these ideas in a set of ethereal double portraits juxtaposing living, dead and sculpted likenesses. These works returned to the '' matière'' relief effects of the early 1950s and exchanged ideas with Bacon and the sculptor Roy Noakes
Some of these new works and a selection of her innovative dancers were presented to the public at the Marlborough Galler
in 1968.
From the 1950s onwards she developed a series of paintings based on the Essex countryside. Existential rather than pastoral, they responded to environmentalist publications such as Rachel Carson
Rachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964) was an American marine biologist, writer, and conservationist whose influential book '' Silent Spring'' (1962) and other writings are credited with advancing the global environmental ...
's ''Silent Spring''. The last of these, ''Migrations'', embed bird and animal motifs in timeless settings. The extraordinary brushwork and relief effects developed over a life-time of drawing in close association with sculptors, was combined with a new potency of colour and epic scale. Swathes of yellow evoke the deserts of pre-history and post-history, as well as the very immediate issue of the fields of oil seed rape
Rapeseed (''Brassica napus ''subsp.'' napus''), also known as rape, or oilseed rape, is a bright-yellow flowering member of the family Brassicaceae (mustard or cabbage family), cultivated mainly for its oil-rich seed, which naturally contains a ...
that were appearing in the 1970s.
In later life, widely read biographies of Giacometti and Bacon brought Rawsthorne fame as a model and muse, but unfortunately had the effect of obscuring her main profession. By the 1980s she was better known as a once beautiful siren, or the bon viveur that Bacon partied with and painted as 'Isabel Rawsthorne'.[The Estate of Francis Baco]
accessed 26 January 2010[ Since her death, however, serious scholarship has ensued, several paintings have entered public collections] and retrospectives have been exhibited.
Exhibitions
* ''Isabel Nicholas: Animal Studies'', Arnold Haskell's Valenza Gallery, London, 1933
* ''Watercolours by Paul Nash, Frank Dobson
Frank Gordon Dobson (15 March 1940 – 11 November 2019) was a British Labour Party politician. As Member of Parliament (MP) for Holborn and St. Pancras from 1979 to 2015, he served in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Health from 1997 t ...
, P.H. Jowett, Adrian Allinson
Adrian Allinson (9 January 1890 – 20 February 1959) was a British painter, potter and engraver known for his landscapes of Southern Europe and North Africa, and for a series of notable posters he made for London Transport.
Life and caree ...
, Isabel Nicholas'', Redfern Gallery, London, 1934
* ''Isabel Lambert: Recent Paintings'', Hanover Gallery
The Hanover Gallery was an art gallery in London. It was opened in June 1948 by the German art expert Erica Brausen and financier and art collector Arthur Jeffress at 32A St. George's Street, W1, and closed on 31 March 1973. It was named afte ...
, London, 1949
* ''London-Paris (New Trends in Paintings and Sculpture)'', Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch, the ICA c ...
, London, 1950, 1955
* Isabel Lambert, Michael Ayrton
Michael Ayrton (20 February 1921 – 16 November 1975)T. G. Rosenthal, "Ayrton , Michael (1921–1975)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2008accessed 24 Jan 2015/ref> was a British arti ...
, Milan, 1950
* Exhibition of Drawings, Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch, the ICA c ...
, London, 1951
* ''Recent Trends in Realist Painting'', Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch, the ICA c ...
, London, 1952
* Exhibition of Paintings, Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch, the ICA c ...
, London, 1954
* ''Contemporary English Theatre Design'', Arts Council of Great Britain, 1957
* ''Isabel Lambert - Recent Paintings'', Hanover Gallery
The Hanover Gallery was an art gallery in London. It was opened in June 1948 by the German art expert Erica Brausen and financier and art collector Arthur Jeffress at 32A St. George's Street, W1, and closed on 31 March 1973. It was named afte ...
, London, 1959
* ''Three Stage Designers: Leslie Hurry
Leslie George Hurry (10 February 1909– 20 November 1978) was a British artist and set designer for ballet, theatre and opera.
Biography
Hurry was born in London, where his father, A. G. Hurry, was a funeral director in St John's Wood. Lesli ...
, Isabel Lambert, Sophie Fedorovitch
Sophie Fedorovitch ( be, Сафія Федаровіч; 3 December 1893 – 25 January 1953) was a Russian-born theatrical designer who worked with ballet choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton from his first choreographed ballet in 1926 until her a ...
'', Arts Council of Great Britain, 1963/64
* ''Dancers of the Royal Ballet: An Exhibition of Drawings and Gouaches by Isabel Lambert'', Mermaid Theatre
The Mermaid Theatre was a theatre encompassing the site of Puddle Dock and Curriers' Alley at Blackfriars in the City of London, and the first built in the City since the time of Shakespeare. It was, importantly, also one of the first new the ...
, London, 1966, Arts Council Gallery, Cambridge, 1967
* ''Isabel Lambert'', Marlborough Fine Art
Marlborough Fine Art was founded in London in 1946 by Frank Lloyd and Harry Fischer. In 1963, a gallery was opened as Marlborough-Gerson in Manhattan, New York, at the Fuller Building on Madison Avenue and 57th Street, which later relocated i ...
, London, 1968
* ''Isabel Lambert: Exhibition of Work'', Framlingham Art Gallery, Suffolk, 1974
* ''Isabel Lambert: Dancers in Action. Drawings, paintings, stage designs'', October Gallery, London, 1986
* Exhibition of work, Fry Art Gallery
The Fry Art Gallery is an art gallery in Saffron Walden, Essex. Recognised as an Accredited Museum by Arts Council England, it displays work by artists of national significance who lived or worked in North West Essex during the twentieth cent ...
, Saffron Walden, 1990
* ''Isabel Rawsthorne 1912–1992 A Memorial Retrospective'', Woods Gallery, Leicester, 1992
* ''Isabel Rawsthorne 1912–1992 Paintings, Drawings and Designs'', Mercer Art Gallery/ October Gallery 1997-98
* ''Isabel Rawsthorne: Natural History'', Oxford University Museum of Natural History
The Oxford University Museum of Natural History, sometimes known simply as the Oxford University Museum or OUMNH, is a museum displaying many of the University of Oxford's natural history specimens, located on Parks Road in Oxford, England. It a ...
, 1998–1999
* ''Transition: The London Art Scene in the Fifties'', Barbican Art Gallery
The Barbican Centre is a performing arts centre in the Barbican Estate of the City of London and the largest of its kind in Europe. The centre hosts classical and contemporary music concerts, theatre performances, film screenings and art exhib ...
, 2002
* ''Epstein and Isabel: Artist and Muse'', Harewood House
Harewood House ( , ) is a country house in Harewood, West Yorkshire, England. Designed by architects John Carr and Robert Adam, it was built, between 1759 and 1771, for Edwin Lascelles, 1st Baron Harewood, a wealthy West Indian plantation ...
, 2008.
* ''Friends and Lovers, Number 3'', The Old Workhouse, Pateley Bridge, 2008-9
* ''Alberto Giacometti "Die Frau auf dem Wagen" Triumph und Tod'', Lehmbruck Museum
The Stiftung Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum - Center for International Sculpture is a museum in Duisburg, Germany.
Sculptures by Wilhelm Lehmbruck, after whom the museum is named, make up a large part of its collection. However, the museum has a sub ...
, Duisburg, 2010
* ''Migration'', The Old Workhouse, Pateley Bridge, 2010
* ''Isabel Rawsthorne: Moving Bodies'', The New Art Gallery Walsall
The New Art Gallery Walsall is a modern and contemporary art gallery sited in the centre of the West Midlands town of Walsall, England. It was built with £21 million of public funding, including £15.75 million from the UK National Lottery an ...
, 2012
* ''Alberto Giacometti and Isabel Rawsthorne, a Conversation'', Tate Britain
Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in ...
, 2022
* ''The Many Sides of Isabel Rawsthorne: the story of a local and international artist'', Fry Art Gallery
The Fry Art Gallery is an art gallery in Saffron Walden, Essex. Recognised as an Accredited Museum by Arts Council England, it displays work by artists of national significance who lived or worked in North West Essex during the twentieth cent ...
, 2022
Theatre design
* ''Tiresias
In Greek mythology, Tiresias (; grc, Τειρεσίας, Teiresías) was a blind prophet of Apollo in Thebes, famous for clairvoyance and for being transformed into a woman for seven years. He was the son of the shepherd Everes and the nym ...
'', Sadler's Wells Ballet
The Royal Ballet is a British internationally renowned classical ballet company, based at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, England. The largest of the five major ballet companies in Great Britain, the Royal Ballet was founded i ...
, 1951
* '' Elektra'', Sadler's Wells Opera
English National Opera (ENO) is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with The Royal Opera. ENO's productions are sung in English. ...
, 1953
* ''Blood Wedding
''Blood Wedding'' ( es, link=no, Bodas de sangre) is a tragedy by Spanish dramatist Federico García Lorca. It was written in 1932 and first performed at Teatro Beatriz in Madrid in March 1933, then later that year in Buenos Aires, Argentina. ...
'', Sadler's Wells Ballet
The Royal Ballet is a British internationally renowned classical ballet company, based at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, England. The largest of the five major ballet companies in Great Britain, the Royal Ballet was founded i ...
, 1953
* ''Coppélia
''Coppélia'' (sometimes subtitled: ''La Fille aux Yeux d'Émail'' (The Girl with the Enamel Eyes)) is a comic ballet from 1870 originally choreographed by Arthur Saint-Léon to the music of Léo Delibes, with libretto by Charles-Louis- ...
'', Sadler's Wells Ballet
The Royal Ballet is a British internationally renowned classical ballet company, based at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, England. The largest of the five major ballet companies in Great Britain, the Royal Ballet was founded i ...
, 1953
* '' Life's a Dream'', The Group Theatre, 1953
* ''Madame Chrysanthème'', Sadler's Wells Ballet
The Royal Ballet is a British internationally renowned classical ballet company, based at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, England. The largest of the five major ballet companies in Great Britain, the Royal Ballet was founded i ...
, 1955
* ''Jabez and the Devil'', The Royal Ballet
The Royal Ballet is a British internationally renowned classical ballet company, based at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, England. The largest of the five major ballet companies in Great Britain, the Royal Ballet was founded in ...
, 1961
Further reading
* P Rose Pulham, 'Isabel Lambert' ''Isabel Lambert'', catalogue, London: Hanover Gallery, 1949
* J Lord 'Sudbury Cottage', ''A Gift for Admiration, Further Memoirs'', Farrar Straus & Giroux, New York, 1998
* V Wiesinger'', Alberto Giacometti, Isabel Nicholas, Correspondences'', Paris: FAAG, 2007
* V Wiesinger and M Harrison, ''Isabel and Other Intimate Strangers'', New York: Gagosian Gallery, 2008
* Carol Jacobi, 'Muse and Maker: Isabel Lambert and Alberto Giacometti' ''Alberto Giacometti "Die Frau auf dem Wagen"Triumph und Tod'', catalogue ed. Veronique Wiesinger and Gottlieb Leinz, Duisburg Museum, Germany, Jan 2010
Carol Jacobi, ''Out of the Cage: The Art of Isabel Rawsthorne'', London: The Estate of Francis Bacon Publishing, Feb 2021
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References
External links
*
* Interview, ''Woman's Hour'', BBC Radio
* Ballet designs ''Royal Opera House
* ''The Chariot'', Lehmbruck Museu
* Photograph of Isabel Lambert (Rawsthorne), The Estate of Francis Baco
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nicholas, Isabel
1912 births
1992 deaths
20th-century English women artists
Alumni of Liverpool College of Art
Alumni of the Académie de la Grande Chaumière
Alumni of the Royal Academy Schools
Artists from Liverpool
English artists' models
Modern painters