Mark Gertler (artist)

Mark Gertler ( born December 9, 1891 in Spitalfields, † June 23, 1939 in London) was a British painter.

Life

Mark Gertler was the son of a Jewish- Austrian immigrant family. A scholarship he was able to study at the prestigious Slade School of Fine Art from 1908 to 1912. In his student years he painted many portraits of his family, most of them from his mother Golda. During his studies, he met Paul Nash, Edward Wadsworth, Christopher Nevinson, Stanley Spencer and Phyllis Gardner know. In the eccentric painter Dora Carrington Gertler found a soul mate.

In Lady Ottoline Morrell Gertler was an important patron of the arts, she put him Walter Sickert, co-founder of the group of painters Camden Town Group, before. Soon after, he had great success as a portrait painter of London society and was a member of the New English Art Club. But his spirited manner and dedication to promoting his work, his own version, led to the increase of personal frustration. In 1914, the art patron Edward Marsh took the young painter to as a mentor; the relationship between the two men soon proved to be difficult. Two years later ended Gertler, a staunch pacifist, cooperation with Marsh - because his former promoter acted as private secretary to the Prime Minister Winston Churchill later and patron of some war poet.

The early 1920s, was diagnosed with tuberculosis Gertler and his doctor advised him frequently to stay in the sanatorium. His illness increasingly influenced his later works. In the following years, two of his closest friends, Katherine Mansfield and DH Lawrence died on the same illness. In 1930, Mark Gertler married in Bath Marjorie Hodgkinson, from the relationship was a son, Luke ( b. 1932 ), produced. At the same time he became a part-time teacher at the Westminster School of Art in London. In the later years he could barely sell paintings and his last exhibition was ridiculed by the art critics. Shortly after, Mark Gertler committed suicide in his studio.