Gerald Leslie Brockhurst

Olliver St. John Gogarty

1942

Oliver Joseph St. John Gogarty (17 August 1878 – 22 September 1957) was an Irish poet, author, otolaryngologist, athlete, politician, and well-known conversationalist. He served as the inspiration for Buck Mulligan in James Joyce's novel Ulysses After attending the Birmingham School of Art, the artist entered the Royal Academy Schools in London, where he received the Gold Medal and Traveling Scholarship in 1913. The award allowed him to visit Paris and Italy, where he studied works by early Italian painters. From 1915 to 1919, the artist lived in Ireland, where he met painter Augustus John, whose painting style was influenced by contemporary French art's simplicity of color and forms. In 1919 he returned to England for his first significant gallery exhibition. During the 1920s the artist became an etcher, focusing primarily on female portraits and using his wife as his model. Coolness, technical perfection, and overt classicism mark both his printmaking style and his painting manner. By 1930 he had returned to painting with a new teenage model, Dorette Woodard, whom he later married. His haunting portraits of her opened the door to fame and fortune, and he became a fashionable portrait painter; his stated goal was to capturing appearance, not character. His sitters included J. Paul Getty, Marlene Dietrich, and the Duchess of Windsor. In 1939, at the height of his success, the artist t settled in the United States. Gerald Brockhurst is best known for his portraits and etchings of glamorous women. Regarded from the age of twelve as a young Botticelli, he studied in England, France and Italy. Brockhurst's placement of a portrait within a surrounding landscape, recalls the work of Italian Renaissance masters, as there is a sense of mystery and the unknown, which separates the viewer from the sitters. Brockhurst's sitters are given extra emphasis by their surroundings and are usually composed close-up, looking straight at you, positioned in shallow space, against a ledge, or against a blank background. By changing the pose, setting or costume he could seemingly transform the model into an entirely different person. To add to the shroud of mystery and romance of the image, and to encourage the imagination of the viewer, the artist would give exotic titles such as, Ophelia, Xenia and Anaïs. In the UK in the 1930's and later in New York, Brockhurst became a fashionable portrait painter with famous sitters including Marlene Dietrich and the Duchess of Windsor. In retrospect he is regarded as an impressive portraitist and printmaker.