FINE ART

An Artist's Champion: Gillian Raffles & Henri Gaudier-Brzeska

16 April 2025

Alice Strang

Gillian Raffles played a vital role in establishing Henri Gaudier-Brzeska as a key figure in early twentieth-century British art, alongside fellow champions of the artist including Horace Brodzky, H. S. (Jim) Ede and Ezra Pound.

She first showed Gaudier’s work in a group exhibition in 1965 before mounting solo shows in her London and Edinburgh galleries spanning forty years, from 1968 until 2008. In 1975, Raffles marked the 60th anniversary of the artist’s death in 1915, aged just twenty-three and whilst serving in the French army, with an exhibition of sixty drawings.

A landmark exhibition of 1977 toured to public galleries in Bradford, Eastbourne, Edinburgh, Middlesborough and Sheffield, introducing Gaudier’s work to many new audiences. Moreover, shows mounted in Canada and the United States of America brought him to international notice.

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Henri Gaudier-Brzeska

In 2008, Gillian Raffles explained:

‘The first work by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska that I acquired at the Mercury Gallery were five small animal and bird drawings from 1912…[They]…were simple line drawings, made with rapidity, immediacy and an acute eye. They were remarkable in the way in which they captured the essence of the subject, a way which I was later to realise was central to all Gaudier’s work. I included the five drawings in…[a]…1965 exhibition. Two sold and I remember being outraged and disappointed that everyone had not responded to them as I had.’

These special characteristics can be seen in works such as Excited Bird, Eagle and Fish, whilst in Cheetah (Jungle Cat) the yellow watercolour comes into play to emphasise the exoticism of the animal depicted. Gaudier was able to indulge his delight in drawing animals partly due to the gift of tickets to London Zoo by the artist and designer Claud Lovat Fraser in 1912. As Evelyn Silber has explained ‘this enabled Gaudier to spend hours at weekends making pen drawings – executed so rapidly the ink was often still wet on the last sketch as he started a new one.’ (Evelyn Silber, Gaudier-Brzeska: Life and Art, Thames and Hudson, London, 1996, p.33).

Raffles continued by recalling her commitment to building Gaudier-Brzeska’s reputation:

‘I began to search out more drawings…Gaudier-Brzeska was an almost unknown name…By 1968 I had sufficient work to mount our first exhibition of Gaudier drawings. In 1970 and 1975 this was followed by two others with considerable success: he was beginning to be known.’

She was able to show the full range of the artist’s draughtsmanship, including early works such as Nuremberg and Roses, in which we see the tentative emergence of talent, to the fully confident flowing lines depicting life models, as seen in Seated Male Nude, Standing Nude and Standing Woman. They may be the result of Life Drawing evening classes that Gaudier attended in 1912.

As Paul O’Keeffe has explained

‘the course fee was five shillings for five weeks, enabling him to draw from the nude each Tuesday and Friday from eight until ten in the evening.’ (Paul O’Keeffe, Gaudier-Brzeska: An Absolute Case of Genius, Allen Lane, London, 2004, p.150).

Gaudier made the most of the opportunity to draw from nude male and female models and wrote to his partner, Sophie Brzeska, ‘I work without stopping – especially while the model is resting, because that is much more interesting…I work all during the two hours without a break in order to get my full six-pennyworth.’ (as quoted in Paul O’Keeffe, op.cit., p.156)

Gaudier found inspiration for drawing virtually everywhere he went, as seen in images suffused with tenderness, such as Children Fishing, touches of humour, as in Profile of a Girl, and a focus on distinctive features such as Figure in a Hat. Woman with Side Buns, executed in pastel and watercolour, is based on a frank expressiveness of line and colour, whilst Wrestler and Male Nude (Horace Brodzky) illustrate an important theme in Gaudier’s practice, not least due to visiting the London Wrestling Club off Fleet Street in 1912, which is the subject of some of his best-known sculptures.

Raffles’ high regard for Gaudier’s drawings reflected his own opinion of them. He exhibited portfolios of works on paper alongside sculptures when he showed with the Allied Artists’ Association at the Albert Hall in 1913, at the Alpine Gallery in 1914 and as part of the landmark Twentieth-Century Art exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery later that year.

A glance at the provenance of many of the drawings presented here shows how they were also valued by key figures in Gaudier’s life and promoters of his legacy, from Sophie Brzeska (Eagle) to Jim Ede (including The Boy Lunn) and Ezra Pound (Male Nude (Horace Brodzky)), to fellow artists appreciating his unique abilities such as Edward McKnight Kauffer (Eagle).

As Dr Evelyn Silber, compiler of the artist’s catalogue raisonné, wrote in her introduction to the 1998 Mercury Gallery exhibition Henri Gaudier-Brzeska: Sculpture and Drawings, Gaudier

‘drew compulsively, daily, snatching every passing opportunity…[his drawings]…reveal his life, moods, learning and working process with joyous immediacy.’

It was perhaps this instinctive passion that drew Gillian Raffles to his work and which underpinned her commitment to him which endured over four decades. Gaudier is now represented in multiple national and international public collections, including in Australia, France, New Zealand, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

"I draw because I love it and to satisfy my ego and I want to be good because it’s important, primarily to me and then to others, but as long as I feel its importance to myself I’m damn’d if I really care."

- Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, 1911

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alice Strang

Senior Specialist, Modern British Art

alice.strang@lyonandturnbull.com

0131 557 8844