Modern & Contemporary Art

Provenance:

The Fine Art Society, London

Exhibited:

London, England, The Fine Art Society, Diverse Paintings, November 1932, no. 23 (as The Old Studio)

London, England, The Fine Art Society, Gluck, April 30 - May 18, 1973, no. 21

Literature: 

Diana Souhami, Gluck, 1895-1978: Her Biography, New York University Press, New York, 1989, pp. 78, illus. 

Amy De La Haye and Martin Pel, Gluck: Art and Identity, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2017, pp. 119, 130

Lot Essay:

No prefix, suffix, or quotes.  - Gluck 

Gluck (British, 1895-1978), born Hannah Gluckstein to an aristocratic family, shed their name down to a single syllable as they crafted their identity as a pioneering figure in British modern art. Known for their strikingly androgenous appearance and subversive fashion, they used their work to explore themes of crucial importance to their identity -- famously through reflections of gender and sexuality through vibrant biomorphic and geometric forms -- but also, here, a space held particularly dear to them. 

Though disapproving of both their personal and professional endeavors, Gluck’s father bought them a home with its own studio in 1926, a three-story red brick Georgian building called Bolton House in Hampstead Village, of which The Old Stable, Bolton House, Hampstead, was painted. This painting represents a unique bookend to Gluck’s storied exhibition history. Retained by the artist throughout their career, it was exhibited in two major solo exhibitions with The Fine Art Society, first in 1932 and then in 1973. For the first show, Gluck—a trailblazer in all aspects-- was able to patent their “Gluck Frame” for the exhibition. Designed in three tiers and specially produced by the artist’s approved frame-maker, Louis Koch, the frames gave the illusion that they were an extension of a room’s architecture, becoming an integral part of Modernist and Art Deco interiors.   

1932 also marked the beginning of Gluck’s romantic and collaborative relationship with society florist and designer Constance Spry, after the pair was introduced by a mutual friend. Spry decorated the Fine Art Society galleries for Gluck's exhibition, the paneled walls of each room featuring Spry’s arrangements. Their relationship ended in 1936; Gluck tossed letters, diaries, and paintings into a bonfire at Bolton House. 

Gluck rejected forenames and honorifics, once resigning from an art society who referred to them as “Miss Gluck” on their letterhead. Homosexuality was illegal for men and unclassified for women at this time. Gluck’s work featured bouquets and flora, spellbinding landscapes, and portraits – frequently of their lovers – and these emotional, intimate depictions challenged a society that scorned the very idea, becoming a distinctive voice in early modern British art. 

Affiliating themselves with no artistic school or movement, Gluck showed only in solo exhibitions, before abruptly stopping their practice at the height of their fame to wage a “paint war” to improve the quality of available materials. After a long and all-consuming campaign lobbying for the use of cold-pressed oil and hand-ground pigments, Gluck succeeded in persuading the British Standards Institution to create a new standard for oil paints. They returned to painting in their seventies, mounting a well-received solo show in 1973 of fifty-two paintings spanning their entire oeuvre, their first since 1944 and also their last, in which The Old Stable, Bolton House, Hampstead was included. Even with a relatively small body of work throughout their life, Gluck’s enduring influence on the art historical cannon through their unapologetic embrace of queer identity, particularly through the championing of their own identity, cannot be overstated. In this example, a small-scale landscape, invitingly cropped and telescopically focused with the help of the Gluck Frame, offers a brief glimpse of the personal life and identity of this fascinating artist at home.