Edna Waugh
| Edna Clarke Hall | |
|---|---|
Self portrait, c.1910s.
|
|
| Born |
Edna Waugh 29 July 1879 Shipbourne, Kent, England |
| Died | 16 November 1979 (aged 100) Deal, Kent, England |
| Nationality | English |
| Education | Slade School of Art |
| Known for | drawing, painting, etching, lithography, poetry |
Edna Clarke Hall (1879–1979) was a watercolour artist, etcher, lithographer and draughtsman who is mainly known for her many illustrations to Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.
Born Edna Waugh in Shipbourne, she was the tenth child of the philanthropist Benjamin Waugh, who, with William Clarke Hall (1866–1932), founded the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC). In 1881, the Waughs moved to Southgate, and in 1889, after her father resigned the ministry to dedicate himself to the NSPCC, the family settled in St Albans, Hertfordshire.
The young Edna Waugh showed an early talent for drawing. When she was fourteen, Clarke Hall arranged for her to enter the Slade School of Art. Whilst there, Edna was taught by Henry Tonks, "the most renowned and formidable teacher of his generation". She studied alongside Gwen and Augustus John, Ida Nettleship, Ambrose McEvoy and Albert Rutherston, and made many drawings and etchings of her new friends. She won many prizes and certificates for her drawings and in 1897 was awarded a Slade scholarship. Although a couple of oil paintings, painted under Gwen John's guidance, exist, Edna's favoured medium as a painter was watercolour.
The 19-year-old Edna married Clarke Hall on 22 December 1898. Although he had previously encouraged and supported his wife's studies, there were tensions between Edna's artistic ambitions and her husband's expectation that she conform to a traditional wifely role. For the next two decades, Edna Clarke Hall's art became a very personal activity only shared with close friends and occasionally shown in group exhibitions. Shortly after their marriage, the Clarke Halls rented a sixteenth-century house called 'Great Tomkins' on Upminster Common. This house reminded Edna of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, inspiring the first of the many illustrations of scenes from the novel that she would create. For the rest of her artistic life Clarke Hall added to the Wuthering Heights drawings and etchings during periods of emotional crisis. They portrayed scenes such as the distraught Catherine crying for the absent Heathcliff and Heathcliff supporting the dying Catherine. One of her drawings of the latter scene was inscribed with the quote ‘Let me alone! If I've done wrong, I'm dying for it'.
...
Wikipedia