Born Hannah Gluckstein to a wealthy and close-knit London family in 1895, the artist Gluck changed her name (forbidding the addition of quotes or prefix) in her early adulthood. A sharply dressed fixture on the London scene of the 1920s and ’30s, she held a number of highly praised “one-man shows” at the Fine Art Society on London’s Bond Street. For these, she painted scenes from the London stage, the landscape of Cornwall and Sussex, startling and modish arrangements of flowers, portraits of those in her social circle and surprisingly candid depictions of her romantic life. Some 90 years after her first exhibition at the Fine Art Society, the gallery is staging a substantial retrospective alongside a group show responding to Gluck’s legacy.
As she entered adult life, Gluck commenced wearing tailored suits, and had her hair cut at a gentlemen’s hairdresser and her footwear made by the royal bootmaker. This portrait of Gluck in her artist’s smock, taken in 1926 when she was 31, was by Howard Coster, a self-styled “photographer of men.”
via: T Magazine / Fine Art Society, London
