that there should have been any cause for misunderstanding or friction. We make bold to say that we shall hope to again have the opportunity of working for you, provided of course that we should have a definite and firm contract for anything which is to be undertaken.
She did not reply.
The room was much admired. Syrie Maugham wrote (5 November 1932) ‘Just a line to tell you how much I loved your show.… The pictures were lovely in themselves and superbly shown. I have never seen an exhibition so beautifully arranged.’ The Times thought it offered a solution to the common difficulty of ‘how to hang pictures in the typically “modern” interior, with its severe lines and plane surfaces.’ The Sunday Times said that the exhibition ‘reveals an architect as well as a painter’ and believed that the paintings were actually let into the panelling.
The guests at her private view were grander and richer than in the twenties. The Mount Temples were there, Syrie Maugham, Cecil Beaton, Lord Portland, Lord Vernon, Oliver Hill, Norman Wilkinson, Ernest Thesiger, Arthur Watts, the Oppenheimers and Nesta Obermer. Queen Mary called in for half an hour on 9 November. Hers was not an entirely impromptu visit. The Meteor, known to the Queen for her considerable funding of charitable works and staunch admiration of all things Royal, had forged the way: ‘Knowing how fond her Majesty is of flower paintings,’ she wrote to Sir Harry Verney, The Queen’s Private Secretary two months before the show,
I wonder if the Queen, in her busy life, could possibly find the time to visit an exhibition being held by my daughter at the Fine Art Society, New Bond Street, from November 1st until the 19th. Perhaps you know my daughter paints under the name of ‘Gluck’. Should her Majesty honour me by visiting the Exhibition, I am sure my deep gratitude and sincere happiness will be beyond expression …
Sir Harry replied that November was a very busy month for The Queen, but that Her Majesty was delighted to make a note of the dates of Mrs Gluckstein’s daughter’s exhibition and if she had a spare half-hour,
I know it will give her great pleasure to see some of your daughter’s beautiful work. You must not, however, count on this because, as you will readily understand, it is not easy for The Queen to fit in her innumerable engagements in the short time at her disposal.
Dear Sir Harry
… Will you please thank her Majesty for her gracious consideration in making a note of the dates of my daughter’s Exhibition and also convey to her my most grateful thanks for her kindness towards me, always in my work, and this time in what is a really personal matter. I do appreciate that her Majesty’s many duties will make a visit very difficult, but I feel highly honoured that she is considering the possibility. I shall hope that fortune may smile on us by giving that extra half hour to her Majesty that she may spend even a few moments at the Exhibition …2
‘I would give a lot to know’, mused the London Letter of the Portsmouth Evening News on 10 November 1932,
whether Queen Mary addressed her as ‘Miss Gluck’ or ‘Gluck’. For Gluck is an artist of the Bohemian kind, wears an Eton crop, affects a masculine type of dress and tells you she dislikes the prefix ‘Miss’ and prefers plain ‘Gluck’. Queen Mary was accompanied by Lady Joan Verney and Sir Harry Verney, and spent a good deal of time inspecting the whimsical pictures on the wall. They are astonishingly clever and not a bit conventional.
Queen Mary apparently gave scrupulous attention to all but one of Gluck’s pictures. She surveyed them through her lorgnette. When she came to 25, ‘The Seventh Veil’, her lorgnette swooped in an arc of dismissal as she went on to number 26, the portrait of Margaret Watts. ‘The Seventh Veil’ was of a bosom, no visible head nor arms, with the corner of the last veil turned up, as if about to be tweaked away. Of the fate of this painting there is no record.
On the day of the Royal visit the Meteor delivered by hand to Buckingham Palace letters of fulsome thanks and pleasure to The Queen and the offer of any of her daughter’s pictures that Her Majesty might deign to accept. Sir Harry replied
Buckingham Palace
10th November 1932
Dear Mrs Gluckstein
… it is indeed nice to know that you were pleased with The Queen’s visit to the Fine Art Gallery yesterday.
I now write to tell you that I have had the honour of speaking to The Queen about your loyal and kind wish to offer Her Majesty one of your daughter’s pictures. The Queen wishes me to say that she is much touched by your proposal, and if you think the picture will not be too much missed from the collection, Her Majesty will be delighted to have the small picture of the tulips.
I feel sure I need not ask you not to mention this matter outside, because The Queen is inundated with such requests from people with whom she is barely acquainted …
Yours very sincerely
Harry Verney
But ‘Tulips’ was already sold, and Gluck became exasperated with her mother’s machinations to reacquire it in order to get Royal notice and win Royal favour either for her daughter or herself:
Bolton House
Hampstead
NW3
November 14th 1932
Mother darling
You have been an angel and I shall always remember your faith and generosity, but my part of the ‘show’ was played when I had painted the pictures, designed the frame and arranged the presentation.
I cannot and will not have anything to do with the ‘sales’ which is the department of my agents The Fine Art Society and I cannot without killing myself, my brain and my soul enter into the bartering for ‘money’ or ‘honour’ of my work.
I am only writing this because I feel that you, who understand so much, do not understand my feelings in this respect. If you once realised what I feel I know you would not ‘put me through the hoop’.
The pictures are on public exhibition. As far as the Fine Art Society are concerned the ‘Tulips’ is sold to Sir Edward Stern – any transaction which takes place in regard to the picture is entirely outside my control and the transaction must be done through Mr Dawbarn – I am not and will not be involved in any way.
I am not giving my pictures away to anyone and will not do so, and when it comes to accounts with the Fine Arts I shall expect two thirds of the price of every picture sold. This is not a question of finance, but of principle and pride.
I could not say all this to you for fear of hurting you, but when you think it over I know that you will think that I am right.
My pictures will find their proper place in due course – there is no need to force the pace’.
Mother darling, you have understood so much and shown your faith-understand now – it means a lot to me –
With all my love
Your Hig
‘Tulips’ was acquired from Sir Edward Stern and given to Queen Mary by negotiations of which there is no record.
The critics received Gluck’s exhibition with the usual paeans of praise and the usual comments on her appearance, which inspired a spoof from Constance Spry:
Excerpt from the Feathered World society news, November 5th 1932
I have just returned from a delightful little chat with the petite and amusing Miss Gluck. I asked her why she had abandoned her patronymic for the delightful pseudonym to which she replied with a charming moue ‘because I prefer it to cluck or duck’. So you see she is a wit! Miss Gluck was dressed in navy blue and wore shoes and stockings; she had had her hair cut at Truefitt’s, she told me with a gay smile. I asked her to have a cigarette and she said ‘I don’t mind if I do’! She is evidently no tyro in the matter of interviews for I asked her to tell me the name of her dentifrice, having observed her beautiful teeth and she archly handed me a sample tube saying ‘won’t you give this a trial?’ We had a frank, not to say abandoned chat about the weather and I then asked her what was her favourite holiday resort, she dismissed my question with a gay little laugh and a sidelong glance which spoke volumes. I said that my paper would be interested in any personal remarks she might like to make – about
herself of course – and as this limitation seemed to deter her I helped her by asking if her sister liked cheese. She answered, whimsically, that she had no sister, so I said ‘if you had a sister do you think she would like cheese?’. To which she archly replied ‘I don’t know.’
Of course you will have guessed that Miss Gluck is an artist. She has painted ever such a lot of pictures big and little and they’re in ever such nice frames all in white. ‘White for purity, you know’ said Miss Gluck with a deep note of reverence in her voice, so I asked her if she was a church woman and whether she sang in the choir. She replied in the fine old biblical fashion by asking another question: ‘Have you come to see the pictures?’ – so quaint of her I thought. And that reminds me, there is one picture which everyone is rushing to see, it is called ‘Hors de Combat’ because she painted it lying down. Of course I was immediately interested in the artistic aspect of Miss Gluck and asked her to tell me more about her pictures. With an odd little gesture she referred me to her Mother saying, ‘My Mother knows more about my pictures than I do, indeed if she were not so busy with her social work she would paint them for me to save my time.’
I then had a confidential talk with her Mother about religion and America.
Just as I was leaving the gallery I caught sight of a picture of Dahlias which reminded me that it was Guy Fawkes day, no less. So I just called over to Miss Gluck to know if she liked Catherine wheels but I don’t think she quite heard me for she said something about feeling like that herself.
As I left the gallery the reporter from the Quiver was asking her if she would be photographed in Yogi costume for publication in next Sunday’s issue.
There was a noise in the gallery and I did not catch her reply.
The show could not have had better reviews or received more attention than it did: ‘Gluck is a remarkable genius’, wrote The Star Man’s Diary on Thursday 3 November, ‘and her pictures and their setting are arresting in the extreme.’ The reviewer talked of her exquisite flower pictures, her breadth of subject matter, her lifelike portraits which seemed about to step out of their frames and thought ‘The Expert Witness’ ‘in Burlington House would easily be the Academy picture of the year’. (In fact Gluck despised the Royal Academy annual exhibition.)
The reviewer for The Lady wrote of her ‘sensitive brush’ and delicate sense of tone, colour and composition: ‘no one who loves painting should miss this exhibition. It is perhaps not irrelevant that it occurs at the tercentenary of Vermeer …’ The Sunday Times talked of her clarity of definition, clean light colour, feeling for ‘stately design’ and ‘Florentine dignity of composition’, The Times of her ‘suavity of workmanship’. The Morning Post, Sphere, Tatler, Studio – all ran pictures of her work and gave enthusiastic reviews.
Twenty nine of her pictures were on show, eleven of them of flowers. The white group, ‘Chromatic’ was the central piece, many of the others were pre-Constance. There were ‘Tulips’ for the Queen, ‘Dahlias’ in a silver cup, orchids she called ‘Fleurs du Mal’ and ‘Chinoiserie’, a branch of catkins, seed pods and fruits. Besides the bosom that offended Queen Mary there was a more oblique sexy picture of a swollen lily concealed among fleshy veined leaves. Gluck called it ‘Undine’ (in mythology a female water spirit who, by marrying a mortal and bearing a child, receives a soul). There were the portraits of Gluck’s mother, James Crichton-Browne, Margaret Watts and Georgina Cookson, luminous landscapes from Cornwall and calm landscapes of the Loire valley painted on summer holidays, pictures of boxing in the Albert Hall, of the Rouse Trial and of Gluck’s old studio at Bolton House, the pony stable covered in snow. Molly Mount Temple bought ‘Oscar’, a fat, glistening, china bull.
The show was popular enough for The Fine Art Society to extend its run for a month. All the pictures were bought and The Gluck Room used for the next exhibition – of Dürer and Rembrandt engravings. Gluck designed a narrower and lighter version of her frame for this and had the gallery walls and frames painted a light grey. She bought a Dürer engraving herself and would point it out as proof of the timelessness of her frame.
Mr Dawbarn, director of the Gallery, wrote to her of ‘the splendid impression created by the room’, how ‘worthwhile and satisfying’ it had all been and how much he looked forward to her next exhibition. Commissions for portraits and flower paintings accrued and orders came for her special frame. Apart from her mother’s appeal for Royal patronage, it had all been on her terms. Her London reputation was secure and Macy’s of New York wanted to take the whole exhibition – walls, pictures, frames and all – and reconstruct it in their store. But day by day as the Depression deepened, the market for art and luxury dwindled. The Gluck Room was dismantled in Bond Street and went back to the timberyard.
The life of Gluck’s London in the thirties went on relatively undisturbed by the turbulence of international money markets, unemployment at home and German rearmament. She continued to produce ever more polished paintings and her 1937 exhibition was as successful as that of 1932. Two years later war swept away the world of high style she inhabited. She lost her home, her social circle, her sense of direction. She faded from the public eye and was never to regain her early fame. But more violent than war was the onslaught of love. It hit her in 1936 and gave her great pleasure and then great pain. She never really recovered from it.
PART TWO
LOVE
1936–1944
SEVEN
‘YOUWE’
My own darling wife. I have just driven back in a sudden almost tropical downpour in keeping with my feelings at leaving you – my divine sweetheart, my love, my life. I felt so much I could hardly be said to feel at all – almost numb and yet every nerve ready to jump into sudden life. I made straight for the studio and tried to be busy and have more or less succeeded, except that everything seems so utterly unimportant that isn’t us or connected with us.
I am interested now only in you and my work, a vast interest really and it doesn’t leave time or energy for anything else.
Dearest and Best – this brings you my love – my hopes that you have a good journey and every thought and wish for your happiness and health. Take care of your darling self for your own Boy-ee’s sake – if not for your own. I love you with all my being now and for ever. Good morning dear heart and goodbye.1
‘Medallion’ is a portrait of Gluck in love with Nesta Obermer. She went with Nesta to Fritz Busch’s production of Mozart’s ‘Don Giovanni’ at Glyndebourne on 23 June 1936. They sat in the third row and she felt the intensity of the music fused them into one person and matched their love. She called ‘Medallion’ the ‘YouWe’ picture and it stood in her studio in Bolton House while she worked on other paintings for her 1937 exhibition. The gaze of aspiration and direction and the determined jaws have something of the feel of socialist revolutionary art. Nesta’s fair hair forms a halo around Gluck’s dark head. There is no ‘setting’. To describe it Gluck took a quote from Coleridge’s Kubla Khan:
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
The painting consoled Gluck during frequent weeks of separation while Nesta travelled the world with her American husband, Seymour. Married in 1925 when Nesta was thirty-one, he a widower some thirty years older, the Obermers led a glittering international social life with friends plucked from Debretts and Who’s Who. They wintered in Switzerland for the sports and summered in Venice.
Beautiful, stylish, glamorous, life-enhancing, magnetic, charismatic, silver, are the adjectives used of Nesta by those who knew her. She added style to her elderly husband’s life but spoke of the marriage as not meaning much to her. In her youth she had been in love with a Duke to whom marriage was not a possibility. As a child she
contracted peritonital tuberculosis which left her unable to have children and dukes want heirs. She was confined to bed for a year:
Brighton on a balcony for a year wasn’t at all bad – quite fun looking back. Fun waking at night with snow on my bed, feeling warm. Listening to Chopin’s Ballades being played by a pianist very loudly in the drawing room for me to hear – and reading, reading. Also I learned very young to love being alone. That was good.2
Her maiden name was Ella Ernestine Sawyer. She was an only child and her father, a Diplomat, advised her to marry when she did. Unmarried daughters of thirty were a problem to their fathers in the 1920s. Of her mother, the daughter of a judge, she wrote aged seventy-six to Gluck (undated, 1969): ‘I can’t remember one thing she gave me either in words or example and I know she never really liked me.’
Her early ambitions were literary and in 1921 she published a slim volume called The Reason of the Beginning and Other Imaginings – airy pieces about eternity. In her literary pursuits she called herself Nesta Sawyer. Her poems, some of which she set to music, were published and broadcast and she had what she called a ‘bedroom’ programme, reading poetry late at night on the wireless. Between the wars two of her plays were staged by her lifelong friend the actor-manager Leon M. Lion, So Good! So Kind! at the Playhouse and Black Magic at the Royalty. The action of Black Magic took place in the ‘Morning Room of Chalfont Manor’ and starred Franklin Dyall and Athene Seyler. Rowntrees, struck by the title, took it for their boxes of plain chocolates.3
‘Medallion’ celebrated Gluck’s ‘marriage’ to Nesta on 25 May 1936. In subsequent diaries Gluck marked this date as her YouWe anniversary. At some point they exchanged rings. Visitors to the studio understood the implication of the picture and felt its sexual edge. They thought it more Wagner than Mozart and likened the heroic heads to Siegfried, to Valkyrie. ‘Vous aimez cette femme,’ said the Berlin psychoanalyst Dr Charlotte Wolff, author of Love Between Women, when dining with Gluck while Nesta was in St Moritz. She knew Gluck and the Obermers and had ‘read’ all their characters through their handwriting and palms:
Gluck Page 9
