Sketch for ‘The Servant Girl’ (1923)

Before attending the Slade School of Fine Art in Bloomsbury (1908-12), Mark Gertler had grown up in a Jewish community around Spitalfields, in London’s East end. Many of his early pictures included friends and family as his subjects. This graphite drawing by Gertler is a study for the painted The Servant Girl (1923) purchased by the Tate Gallery at Gertler’s retrospective exhibition at the Leicester Galleries, London in 1941, two years after the artist’s untimely death. The drawing was bequeathed to the Contemporary Art Society by the civil servant and collector Sir Edward Marsh (1872-1953) who had begun acquiring modern British art in 1911 and became Gerler’s patron. Marsh purchased it as ‘Study for “The Maid” at Gertler’s Goupil Gallery show in London in 1923 when it was displayed along with its companion painting. It has variously been called ‘Girl in Apron’ and ‘Girl in a Pinafore’ when out on loan from Marsh’s collection. It was among the huge bequest of over 200 artworks Marsh made to the Contemporary Art Society, after being its Chairman from 1936 and presented to the Tate Gallery in 1954.

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