ECLIPSED WOMEN PAINTERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 116, 17 May 1924, Page 22

ECLIPSED WOMEN PAINTERS.

When people wrote about the pro mise of the Slade School twenty yean ago they used to decide that the most brilliant students were Augustus John William Orpen, and Edna Clarke Hall The history of the third makes oni realise that it is undoubtedly a disadvantage to be a woman if one woulc be an artist as well. She went to th. Slade at fourteen and did wonders Then she married at eighteen and gave up etching for many years because nitric acid and babies cannot safely be kept ir near association. The war began when her own children required less persona; attention, and then she went to 100 l after a settlement of East End young sters, and worked so hard there that there was no time to draw. Now sh. has emerged again with an exhibition o; etchings. *Some are inspired bj "Wuthering . Heights," and have _ delightful strength and wildness. , Mrs. Edna Clarke Hall's emergenci from the domestic eclipse which foi lowed her brilliant promise as a Sladi School student brings a reminder fron a correspondent of a London paper o another case in which creative geniu: was defeated by femininity—that of tin late Mrs. Joanna Wells. As Joanni Boyce, this brilliant painter was in thi heart of the Pre-Raphaelite movement and was by many of the circle and it admirers considered better than Miliar in his early manner. In the comprehen sive Pre-Raphaelite Exhibition held a the Tate Gallery last April the few smal examples of her work showed her to bi a more promising artist than almos any of the others. She might have doni great things as a painter. But, instead she married and died in child-birth ii her thirtieth year.