Lady Helena Gleichen
(1861 - 1922) |
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portrait busts, landscapes, horses Art Work
| Name: |
Lady Helena Gleichen |
| Gender: |
Female |
| Place of Birth: |
England |
| Nationality: |
British |
| Birth: |
1861 |
| Death: |
1922 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
portrait busts, landscapes, horses |
| Medium: |
watercolour |
| Method: |
watercolour painting |
| Style: |
Realism |
| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painting
Sculpture
Printmaking |
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Biography
The sculptor, painter and etcher Lady Feodora Gleichen was the daughter of Prince Victor of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. Her younger sister, Helena, also became an artist. In her memoir, Contacts and Contrasts (London 1940), Helena Gleichen recalled: 'In those days it was a terrible thing for one's daughters to insist on having professions, but my father encouraged us each to go ahead as if we had been boys.'
After training at the Slade, Gleichen became known for portrait busts of the aristocracy, memorials and decorative architectural pieces These included statues of Queen Victoria (a relative by marriage), Edward VII, Florence Nightingale and Lord Kitchener Tate houses her Head of a Girl (c.1921). Gleichen exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery, the Royal Academy and the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers in 1884. An exhibition of her watercolors was held at the Cotswold Gallery, London in 1922.
Gleichen was particularly interested in women's art. She exhibited with the Society of Women Artists and left a bequest to the Royal Society of British Sculptors to fund an annual award for women. During the First World War her sister Helena Gleichen served as an ambulance driver and radiographer. She and her friend Nina Hollings (sister of the composer Ethel Smyth) constructed a portable X-ray machine. The Women's Work Sub-Committee of the Imperial War Museum commissioned Feodora Gleichen to create models illustrating her sister's work, and Taking a Radioscope of a Wounded Soldier on the Italian Front and Taking a Radiograph with the Dynamo Driven by the Motor Car are still in the museum's collection. The Englishwoman magazine commented in 1918 that the first piece portrayed 'the devoted work which is being done under primitive conditions by women in medical and hospital units abroad'. Feodora Gleichen's son had commanded the 37th Division at Monchy-les-Preux, and she created a memorial to them in the year of her death. |
Samples of Work
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