My grandmother reflected in the mirror painting my mother
I was clearing out my studio today in an effort to declutter, create space, create energy & inspire myself in a dreary February. I opened some of my grandmother’s sketchbooks where I was immediately struck by what a huge influence she has had on me both as an anarchic role model & someone who, unbeknownst to her, gave me permission to lead a somewhat unconventional life.
She was a precocious only child, her Irish mother having studied archaeology and then worked in Egypt in the Valley of the Kings with Professor Flinders Petrie, (himself an archaeologist with somewhat unorthodox methods of teaching & working.)
The family ended up in Italy with the young Daphne painting in studios in Florence at some tender age, all recorded with her mother’s box brownie camera.
Daphne is 2nd from the right!
The timeline is a bit blurred but Daphne ended up at the Royal Academy & then at the Slade before marrying my grandfather and being swept off to the ‘colonies’ to have a life of adventure.
The sketchbooks in question covered part of her time being a young colonial wife in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) where it is evident that she was determined to continue her art practice making an effort to record what she saw around her. Her drawing is precise and accomplished but what strikes me was how she must have been drawing & painting en plein air at a time when such things were highly unusual for young women.
Having initially been trained as a portrait painter she turned her hand to documenting just about anything she saw. Her paintings were diverse, however, because she lost the connection with Europe and new art styles, she was never recognised and her works retained the academic style of her teachers.
Daphne Moore
In those days being an artist was so much harder for women and as she said: ‘darling child, never get married if you want to be an artist .... it’s such a distraction’. (Though as she was never one to mince her words, this was not uttered in quite such polite language.)
She & my grandfather finally moved to South Africa where she befriended some of the formative local artists of the 1950s and 1960s. South African art in the 1950s was far more influenced by the work of German expressionism than by anything happening in the UK with bold colours & vigorous brushwork. Poor Granny looked somewhat out of place & although she exhibited, her work didn’t get the glowing reviews she longed for. Her nemesis was the now extremely famous Irma Stern, a successful woman artist in her own lifetime, with a huge personality, enormous energy & needless to say, no husband to hold her back.
Irma Stern
Irma Stern’s Paintings are now some of the most sought after works in South Africa, sold for vast sums at Bonhams.
My sister and I love our collection of Granny’s work & in a future blog I’ll talk about a most extraordinary and spooky thing that happened to me with regard to her paintings confirming in my mind that she really is my guardian angel.
Granny's sketchbook circa 1934
