Lot 405
ELYSE ASHE LORD (1900-1971) §
'PUPPETS OF THE MOON'
Auction: Design Since 1860 Day Two | Thurs 15th October | Lots 246 to 524
Description
ink, watercolour and bodycolour, signed lower right E. LORD, framed
Dimensions
55cm x 37.5cm (frame size 73.5cm x 56cm)
Provenance
From the estate of the artist
Footnote
Born Elise Müller in 1885, Elyse Ashe Lord’s early life is poorly documented, and her date of birth is frequently reproduced incorrectly. Rising anti-German sentiment led her to anglicise her first name when she married Reverend Thomas Ashe Lord around 1908. She trained at Heatherley’s School of Art in Chelsea, which specialised in portraiture, figurative painting, printmaking and illustration.
Until 1921 Lord primarily worked in watercolour, but she became best known for her coloured etchings. She developed a distinctive technique combining drypoint etching for the line with woodblock printing to build up layers of colour. Contemporary accounts praise her meticulous practice, noting that she personally supervised ‘all of her own printing’ and retained the first ten impressions. Her estate consequently contained progressions showing the development of colour, as well as annotated proofs suggesting alterations.
Lord’s subject matter was predominantly Asian, despite her never having travelled to the region. The 1914 British Museum exhibition of Chinese paintings has been proposed as a possible catalyst, while Lord credited Arthur Waley’s translations of Chinese poetry with giving her access to Eastern culture. Her designs also reveal influences from ceramics, textiles and scrolls from Persia, India, Japan and elsewhere.
Her first exhibition was held in 1919, but critical recognition came with her 1921 Brook Street Gallery exhibition of seventy drawings. During the 1920s her reputation grew rapidly: she was elected to the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours in 1922, exhibited at the Paris Salon, where she won a silver medal, and was featured by the Studio. In 1927 the Lefevre Gallery held a major exhibition of her watercolours and prints.
Lord later lived near Oxford, where her husband died in 1943. She survived him until 1971 and was reputedly a wealthy recluse. Although her later working life is uncertain, her output was prolific, comprising at least 350 unique designs. Following her death, her estate passed to her publisher H. C. Dickens, from whom the current owner acquired the works offered here.
