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The early life of Elyse Lord seems to be shrouded in mystery but between 1915 and 1935 she is recorded as living at various addresses in Kent. In November 1921 she held her first important solo exhibition of 70 drawings at the Brook Street Gallery in London and the following year was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour.
Lord also belonged to the Society of Graver-Printers in Colour having quickly established her reputation in that medium, attested by the fact that in 1927 a monograph was devoted to her work in a series called Masters of the Colour Print. In the monograph Malcolm Salaman wrote, no prints today conform to the ideal of unifying the original designer, engraver and colour-printer with richer fulfilment of beauty, with greater independence of artistic expression, than those of Elyse Lord, with the oriental inspiration of their pictorial conceptions, their human significance delicate and subtle as the old Chinese poetry she loves, their decorative and expressive harmonies inherent in the rhythmic designs and the colour-music, and these persuading to their service an exquisitely appropriate craftsmanship of elusive originality. These prints are unlike anything being produced by any artist in Europe today …
Lord’s subject matter was often exotic Oriental figures and flowers and she frequently combined her considerable skills as a draughtswoman / watercolourist in the production of her colour prints as the delicate images, drawn and painted on tracing paper, were used as the original designs for the prints. She was also noted for her watercolours on silk which were exhibited at the Royal Academy on several occasions. Until 1939 she exhibited regularly with the Lefevre Gallery in London and the publisher Alex Reid issued much of her work as book illustrations including the Arabian Knights. She also held an exhibition of her coloured etchings at the Arthur Ackerman Gallery, London in 1936.
More widely Lord exhibited at the Royal Institute, the Royal Scottish Academy, the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool and the Paris Salon, where she was awarded a silver medal for colour prints. Lord’s work is represented in several important public collections including the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum. In 1990 Cyril Gerber Fine Art of Glasgow held an important retrospective exhibition of her work. |
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