A Fine Oil on Canvas Design of Large Scale Showing the Ages of Man by Renowned Illustrator Gwynedd May Hudson

A Fine Oil on Canvas Design of Large Scale Showing the Ages of Man by Renowned Illustrator Gwynedd May Hudson This fine and striking design, in its original frame, illustrates the ages of man or the circle of life reading from right to left. It begins with the delivery of babies by storks, toddlers riding a goat, school age children frolicking with lambs in the centre ground and then a variety of elegant women in their 20s-30s. The woman then continues to age and the colours used become much more muted and dramatic towards the left hand side of the piece which concludes with a figure kneeling at a grave. The design is on a shaped canvas, rather than simply rectangular, and the label to the back of the piece reveals that it was one of Gwynedd Hudson’s exhibits at the 1916 joint exhibition of the Brighton Guild of Applied Art and the Sussex Women’s Art Club held in the Public Art Galleries, Church Street, Brighton. There is no pricing information indicated on the back, meaning the piece was not intended for sale and must have returned to the artist after the exhibition. The piece was intended as ‘decoration for a drawing room’. Thanks to Mrs Amy McMullen at the National Art Library in the V&A, we have determined that the present piece was no. 247 in the catalogue for the exhibition but, sadly, there is no further information regarding the specific drawing room involved. Therefore it is impossible to know whether the piece was intended as a general design that could be adapted for any fashionable drawing room of the period or as part of a specific commission for a particular interior scheme. Gwynedd May Hudson Born in 1881 or 1882, Hudson studied art at the Brighton School of Art. She quickly found success with her lavishly-created Art Deco book illustrations, amongst her most famous works being an edition of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, fist published in the 1920s, and the 1931 edition of J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan and Wendy, both of which are regarded as classics of children’s illustration. From around 1910 she had exhibited at the Royal Academy and was a talented figure painter. She also designed posters, her work for the London Underground being highly regarded and extremely collectable today. Based in Hove for much of her life, her career was relatively short, lasting from c.1910 to the mid 1930s. She died in 1935 but not before she had left a lasting mark on the art of book illustration, her style fusing together fantasy and whimsy and a particularly interesting use of light and colour with a palette that was instantly recognisable. Original works by Hudson are rarely encountered on the market and the present piece is by far the largest example of her work recorded to this point. Provenance Exhibited at the 1916 joint exhibition of the Brighton Guild of Applied Art and the Sussex Women’s Art Club held in the Public Art Galleries, Church Street, Brighton, 1916, exhibit no. 247