Written by Fleur O’Reilly
The once-famous artist who was an integral part of Britain’s interwar art scene, Gluck, has found her way back into the spotlight in the past few years. Her art was famous for its unique and distinctive florals and portraits of the 1920s and 30s. However, she also gained a reputation for her gender non-conforming style.
Born in 1895 in London, England, the artist known as Gluck grew up in one of the wealthiest Jewish families in the country at the turn of the century. Whilst she was born Hannah Gluckstein, she was known to refer to herself as ‘simply Gluck’ and rejected any forename or honorific (“no prefix, suffix, or quotes”), and also went by the names Peter and Hig. Her art was known for distinctive floral paintings and for capturing the essence of the 1920s. She was also known for defying gender norms and for her lesbian relations.
Her mother, Francesca Halle, was an American opera singer and her uncles ran the Lyon’s Food Emporium. This money would later allow her to establish herself as an artist. However, she would separate herself from her Jewish heritage, associating more with Catholic groups and subjects in her art. In 1913 at the age of eighteen, she attended St. John’s Wood Art School in London from 1913–16 before running away to Lamorna, an artist’s colony in Cornwall. The artists at Lamorna were inspired by the bohemian Newlyn School of Painters, an artist’s colony driven by a love for painting outdoors, embracing the light and diversity offered by the landscapes. Lamorna would become a popular subject in her art.
Gluck was noted for her floral portraits and her paintings that captured the roaring 20s high society that she was a part of. She was also noted for her new design of an Art Decor picture frame, the ‘Gluck Frame’. This frame became a quintessential piece of Modernist and Art Deco interiors of the 1930s, securing her reputation.
The gender-neutral persona Gluck adopted in 1918 was a key part of her identity, when on an official document the London Fine Art Society referred to them as “Miss Gluck”, they resigned. She wore male-presenting outfits such as suits, cut her hair cropped and smoked out of a pipe. This androgyny is evident in any of their self-portraits. They were also known for their romantic relationships with women, not hiding the taboo topic from the public. One of her most famous pieces of art depicts her ‘marriage’ to Nesta Obermer, the married British socialite and philanthropist. The Medallion, painted in 1936, depicts Obermer and Gluck together and was even used as the cover for Radclyffe Hall’s lesbian The Well of Loneliness.
She would continue to live and work between London and Lamorna, Cornwall until her death in 1978. Despite living a life outside of normal societal bounds, with a non-gender conforming appearance and lesbian relations, Gluck was a well-respected artist, whose art was displayed in the Royal Academy and was even popular with Queen Mary. Gluck’s art fell out of favour after WWII, but her art is once more gaining popularity; her pieces can be found at the Tate (Flora’s Cloak c.1923), and the Royal Academy (Gluck c.1942) and were a feature in ‘Queer British Art’ at the Tate in 2017.
I would like to draw the reader’s attention to this piece of text from the Royal Academy’s website for their approach towards language in this article:
“We know Gluck adopted a gender-neutral name and rejected all prefixes, meaning gendered titles which describe a person’s marital status, such as “Miss” and “Mrs”, but also that Gluck was referred to by friends using she/her pronouns and did not dispute this. What we can’t know is how Gluck would want to be referred to today, now there is a more expansive and inclusive range of terminology and pronouns available.
Therefore, we allow authors to reach their own informed and respectful conclusions when describing Gluck.
We feel this approach provides space for a dialogue about how we should approach the task of describing this convention-defying artist in the 21st century.”
Retrospect Journal 