Kaff Gerrard ''née'' Katherine Leigh-Pemberton (1894-1970) was a British artist. Although she was a prolific painter and potter, Gerrard rarely exhibited during her lifetime and only gained significant recognition after her death. A 1991 exhibition led to a number of British national museums acquiring examples of her work.

Biography

Gerrard studied at the

Slade School of Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

from 1922 to 1924 and won several prizes while there. These included the first prize for painting from the cast in 1922, a prize for life painting and, in 1923, a first prize for portrait painting. While at the Slade, she met her future husband

Alfred Gerrard Alfred Horace "Gerry" Gerrard RBS (7 May 1899 – 13 June 1998) was an English modernist sculptor. He was head of the sculpture department at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1925 and professor of sculpture there from 1949 to 1968, where he ...

who later became head of the Slade sculpture department and then professor of sculpture at the college. The couple married in 1933 and lived in an old farmhouse in Kent. While her husband developed his teaching career and completed several public commissions, Gerrard continued to paint, work on pottery and sculpture and develop a country garden. She painted on either the

Sussex Downs The South Downs are a range of chalk hills that extends for about across the south-eastern coastal counties of England from the Itchen valley of Hampshire in the west to Beachy Head, in the Eastbourne Downland Estate, East Sussex, in the eas ...

or the

South Downs The South Downs are a range of chalk hills that extends for about across the south-eastern coastal counties of England from the Itchen valley of Hampshire in the west to Beachy Head, in the Eastbourne Downland Estate, East Sussex, in the eas ...

on an almost daily basis. During World War II, Gerrard painted a number of rural scenes showing crashed planes and bomb damage. At least one of these was purchased by the

War Artists' Advisory Committee The War Artists Advisory Committee (WAAC), was a British government agency established within the Ministry of Information at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 and headed by Sir Kenneth Clark. Its aim was to compile a comprehensive artist ...

. Gerrard also painted more abstract works often with a heavily symbolic content, sometimes with Christian elements. During her life, Gerrard only had one public exhibition of her work, a joint show with her future husband at the

Colnaghi Colnaghi is an art dealership in St James's, central London, England, which is the oldest commercial art gallery in the world, having been established in 1760. Foundation The business that became the Colnaghi gallery was established by Itali ...

gallery in 1931, that featured examples of her pottery and sculpture. In 1991, an exhibition of her work was held at the Royal Museum & Art Gallery in Canterbury. This led to a reappraisal of her work and a number of British museums and galleries acquired examples of her art. These included the

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

, the Imperial War Museum and the

Fitzwilliam Museum The Fitzwilliam Museum is the art and antiquities museum of the University of Cambridge. It is located on Trumpington Street opposite Fitzwilliam Street in central Cambridge. It was founded in 1816 under the will of Richard FitzWilliam, 7th Vis ...

in Cambridge.

References

External links

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Works by Gerrard in the Imperial War Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gerrard, Kaff 1894 births 1970 deaths 20th-century English painters 20th-century English women artists Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art British war artists English women painters British modern painters World War II artists 20th-century women painters