GLUCK | SELF-PORTRAIT

Lady Gluckstein

Acquired by the present owners circa 1980

Gluck, ‘No prefix, suffix or quotes', was born Hannah Gluckstein in 1895 into the wealthy family that founded Lyons & Co. Studying at St John’s Wood School of Art from 1913-1916, she ran away in 1916, from London to Lamorna in Cornwall with her lover, E.M. Craig, and set up a dilapidated cottage amongst a community of artists and writers. Gluck came to widespread prominence with her flower paintings, partly inspired by her romance with Constance Spry, the famed society florist, and through her long-standing relationship with The Fine Art Society, which held exhibitions of her work in 1926, 1932 and 1937 and her final exhibition in 1973. The gallery also created the eponymous Gluck room, designed to complement her idiosyncratic stepped Gluck frames.

Gluck was arguably as famous for her rebellious and bohemian lifestyle and unconventional appearance, made famous through her striking self-portraits, as for her work. She cropped her hair, accentuating her arresting profile, wore men’s clothes, smoked a pipe, and, of course, changed her name. Her memorable self-portrait, Gluck, in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, from 1942, was the banner image for the Tate’s recent exhibition, Queer British Art 1861-1967, summer 2017. Looking down at the viewer over her prominent nose with a haughty expression,

Gluck’s self-image is one of unabashed self-assurance and confidence, of queer pride and a forthright statement of difference. This self-portrait was actually a marker of the end of the most important relationship of her life with Nesta Obermer, a well-known socialite married to a wealthy elderly husband. Where this relationship had been the inspiration behind the famous ‘YouWe’ picture, Medallion, 1936, a public declaration of lesbian love exhibited at The Fine Art Society in 1937, the solo self-portrait is an image of reliance and isolation.

Gluck’s recognizable profile marks the present work as a self-portrait even without the inscription, Gluck, that doubles as title and signature. An early work from 1921, the self-portrait is an intriguing presentation of the artist in Eastern garb with calligraphic writing. As Gluck experimented with her self-presentation in her life, so she does equally in the present work, playing with fashion and culture to challenge gender expectations through a highly stylised image, decorative and yet intensely striking. The finesse with which she handles pen and ink, and touches of colour, particularly the silver, is extraordinary, with supreme detail that gives the overall work immense presence. As a lesbian, non-gender conforming person in Edwardian England, Gluck’s determination and self-belief was, unquestionably, brave. That fearlessness in art and life is deserving of her current rise to renewed prominence.