Dora Gordine

Dora Gordine (8 June 1895 – 29 December 1991) was an Estonian Jewish Modernist figurative and portraitist sculptor. Her early career was influenced by the Noor Eesti (‘Young Estonia’) group of artists who favoured Art Nouveau. She moved to Paris and on her third marriage, to Hon. Richard Hare (1907–66), her career expanded to the extent that some critics regarded her as amongst the finest sculptors of her generation.In May 1925 Dora exhibited a Bronze (503) at the Salon Nationale (closed at the end of August 1925). "She gave her birthplace as 'Libau', her nationality as 'Esthoniene'...
Dora Gordine
Estonian Jewish Museum. She specialized in portrait sculptures attracting international admirers from the political, social, artistic, literary and theatrical worlds. Her legacy also includes a number of public space pieces. Her latter career was not as prolific or as fêted and Gordine was relatively unknown at the time of her death. Major exhibitions in London in 2006 and 2009 have revived her standing and her former home is now a museum.

Early life

Dora Gordine's childhood has not been well documented. There is confusion over her date of birth with various dates 1895 (likely), 1898 and 1906 mentioned. She was the youngest of four children born to Morduch ("Mark") Gordin and Emma Ester Schepshelewitch, both Russian Jews, in Liepāja, Latvia, at a time when it was still part of the Russian Empire. Two of her siblings, Nikolai and Anna, died at the hands of the Nazis in Tallinn, Estonia in 1941. Another brother, Leopold, moved to London, where he lived until his death. The Gordin family evidently belonged to a comfortable middle class. There was money available to pay Gordine's elder brother, Leopold, to study engineering at Edinburgh University. Later, it seems that Gordine's father was also prepared to pay for Gordine's elder sister, Anna, to study at one of Tallinn's leading art schools.

By 1912 the Gordin family had moved to Tallinn, Estonia. It is clear that Gordine's approach to sculpture was considerably shaped by the example of the pre-First World War Noor Eesti (‘Young Estonia’) a group of artists who championed Art Nouveau in the country. She exhibited bronze sculptures in Tallinn in 1917, 1920 and 1921. In the autumn of 1924 she went to Paris to study a course in French civilisation, improving her knowledge of contemporary French sculptural practice. Then, surrounded by galleries and salons, she "instinctively felt a correlation between the rhythms of music and sculpture" and developed her sculptural vision. Gordin gallicised her surname by adding an "e" perhaps in an effort to make it sound more Russian and always denied or deflected suggestions that she was Jewish.

In 1925 she worked as a painter on a mural for the British Pavilion at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, in Paris. It provided the means to cast a bronze for exhibition at the Beaux Arts Society. The following year she was invited to exhibit at the Salon des Tuileries where her design of the head & torso of a Chinese philosopher earned enthusiastic reviews; The Straits Times (1932) wrote: "Like Byron, one morning Dora Gordine woke up famous". Between 1929 and 1935 she sculpted bronzes for the City Hall, Singapore. Leicester Galleries in London presented Gordine's sculpture in a solo show in 1928. It was a huge success and all her work was sold, amongst which was ''Javanese Head'' bought by Samuel Courtauld for the Tate Gallery collection.

Marriage

After a brief marriage to a Wladimir Rolw in Estonia, in 1930 she married Englishman Dr George Herbert Garlick in Singapore. In 1936 she married her third husband, the Hon. Richard Gilbert Hare (5 September 1907 – 1966), son of Richard Granville Hare, 4th Earl of Listowel and Freda Vanden-Bempde-Johnstone on 21 November 1936. Through her marriage she became part of a liberal aristocratic cultural elite. The independent income from Hare allowed Dora to build Dorich House in Kingston Vale, her studio and a showcase for her work. As well as, a showcase for their collections of Indian, Chinese and nineteenth-century Russian art and furniture.

Career

Her husband introduced her to London society figures, many of whom sat for her, Dame Edith Evans, Dame Beryl Grey, Dorothy Tutin, Siân Phillips, Emlyn Williams, Sir Kenneth Clark, John Pope-Hennessy and Professor F. Brown, Head of the Slade School of Art. There were also overseas commissions including the ''Kwa Nin'', whose head sculpture Gordine called ''The Chinese Lady of Peace'' and a low-relief at Gray's Inn to Sun Yat-Sen, the former leader of China.

Each portrait head had its own patina according to Gordine's vision of her sitter. When interviewed by the BBC
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