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The Well (circa 1928)

Edna Waugh Clarke Hall

lithograph, printed in brown on paper

Prints and Drawings Department, British Museum, London

The Well (circa 1928)

Photo credit: Trustees of the British Museum

Details

Classification:

Print

Physical Object Description:

Young woman standing by pitcher, breasts bared. c.1928 Lithograph, printed in brown. Lettered with verse entitled: "The Well" on stone:

I said “the Well is deep”
There is always the Well
I heard the woodpeckers laugh
Saw the buds swell
Laughed too and lightly kissed you
Wells are deep
Profounder was the music […]
Lighter than my mirth
Kiss fairer than things of Earth
When ill of Loveliness love woke from sleep
“O mortal” said my soul behold the light
One tear and fragrant substance of delight
But you beheld it not and now weep
When I remember how my loving hand
As by the Well my spirit stood embraced
The Well remains, the well is deep
O proud my spirit is with beauty chased
Walking the […] that is now a waste
Mo [crossed out re] plumb [encircled] can measure
And no thought shall leap
The lone abyss where my spirit moves
No eye behold the blossom of its loves
When full of loneliness
They woke from sleep

Technique:

Lithograph

Dimensions:

42 x 30 cm

Accession Number:

1928,0310.55

Credit:

Presented by the Contemporary Art Society, 1928

Ownership history:

Purchased by Campbell Dodgson (1867-1948) for the Contemporary Art Society, with its Prints and Drawings Fund, 1919-28; presented to the Prints and Drawings Department, British Museum, London, 1928

Edna Clarke Hall (née Waugh) was a watercolour artist, etcher and lithographer. She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art under Henry Tonks (1862-1937) from 1894 where she won the Summer Composition Prize in 1897 and was awarded a scholarship. The following year, when she was only 19, she married William Clarke Hall (1866-1932), a barrister friend of her father’s who had recommended her to the art school. However, there were tensions in the marriage and she resorted to illustrating Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, which she did for the rest of her artistic life. She had two sons, born 1905 and 1910 respectively, but she often suffered from depression despite having an critically-acclaimed exhibition at the Chenil Galleries in 1914 and she had a nervous breakdown in 1919. Encouraged by her former teacher Henry Tonks and her psychologist, her husband set up a studio for her in South Square, Gray's Inn, where she could work. Between 1924 and 1941 she exhibited regularly at The Redfern Gallery in London. After the death of her recently-knighted husband a trust was formed by their friends and Lady Clarke-Hall’s fellow Slade students, the siblings Mrs F. Samuel (Dorothy Salaman), Mrs. E. Bishop (Louise Salaman), and Michel Hewitt Salaman, to enable her to retain her studio and continue working. In 1941, after her studio was destroyed in the Blitz, 46 of Clarke-Hall’s drawings were donated by the Salamans to the Contemporary Art Society which were distributed to 12 museums throughout the UK.

All rights reserved. Any further use will need to be cleared with the rights holder. Permission granted to reproduce for personal and educational use only. Commercial copying, hiring, lending is prohibited. The collection that owns this artwork may have more information on their own website about permitted uses and image licensing options.

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