Guadeloupe Head was completed while Gordine was living and working in Paris in the late 1920s. It is one of three works by Gordine known to have been photographed by the visual artist Man Ray. The name of the model is unknown.
This painting was completed in the early 1930s when Gordine was living and working in Johor and Singapore and travelling extensively in Asia. In 1934, Richard Hare reported to a friend that Gordine had begun ‘painting seriously’ and had become ‘deeply absorbed in it’.
Richard Hare (1907-1966) met Dora Gordine in 1926, when he was an undergraduate at Balliol College, Oxford. They were introduced by Janet Vaughan, Gordine’s friend and the daughter of Hare’s former headmaster. Although the pair would not marry for another decade, and Gordine would spend long periods living in Paris and Asia, they remained in […]
According to the art critic Marie Dormoy, the French sculptor François Pompon helped Gordine secure an important invitation to exhibit at the Salon des Tuileries in Paris after seeing her ‘torso of a man’, probably Walking Male Torso. This led to her first major success in the city. Photographs of Dorich House interiors taken soon […]
The sitter for this sculpture is believed to have been a neighbour of Gordine on Kingston Vale. The work was cast at Valsuani in Paris. It was first exhibited at the Leicester Galleries in London in 1938 and was particularly well received.
This work was completed while Gordine was living and working in Johor and Singapore in the early 1930s. The model came from the state of Sarawak in Borneo. His name is unknown. The bronze was first exhibited as Torso at the Leicester Galleries in London in 1933 and subsequently as Dyak Torso, Man, and Torso […]
In ancient Greek myth Atalanta was the daughter of Lasus and Clymene. In a 1949 issue of the art journal Apollo, Mary Sorrell described the figure as ‘wonderfully alive in her full sculptural grace’. Dame Freya Stark bought a cast of the work in the 1950s.
Gordine travelled widely in southeast Asia in 1930–31 and her work of this period was influenced by her experiences. This seated figure, Pagan, was begun by Gordine in her studio in Johor and finished in England. It was placed in the circular bay in the Gallery soon after Dorich House was completed in 1936.
The model was an RAF fighter pilot, Squadron Leader Hedleigh ‘Bobby’ St George Bond (1918-84), who flew a Spitfire during the Battle of Britain and later flew with the Desert Air Force in the Middle East.
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