Helen Saunders

Helen Saunders (pronounced Saːnders) was born in Bedford Park, Ealing, London.Peppin, Brigid. 'Helen Saunders, 1885–1963', Ashmolean Museum Oxford, 1996 When eighteen years' old she enrolled at a newly opened local studio run by Rosa Waugh Hobhouse who recognised her talent and encouraged her to study at the Slade School of Art which Saunders attended three days a week in 1907. She later attended the Central School of Arts and Crafts which offered more technical training than the Slade. By 1912 Saunders' work had become "recognisably Post Impressionist", and in February her painting "Rocks, North Devon" was accepted by The Friday Club (an exhibiting group set up by Vanessa Bell). She exhibited works at Galerie Barbazanges and at the Allied Artists Association.{{Cite book|last=Pepin|first=Brigid|title=Helen Saunders 1885–1963|publisher=Lipscomb Printers|year=1996|location=Dagenham|pages=6}}

File:Saunders, Abstract Multicoloured Design.jpg.]]

Saunders exhibited in the Twentieth Century Art exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1914, one of the first British artists to work in a nonfigurative style.{{cite book|author=Carolyn Trant|title=Voyaging Out: British Women Artists from Suffrage to the Sixties |publisher=Thames & Hudson|year=2019|isbn=9780500021828}} In 1915 she became associated with the Vorticists through the artist Wyndham Lewis,{{Cite web |title=Helen Saunders: forging her own path {{!}} Art UK |url=https://artuk.org/discover/stories/helen-saunders-forging-her-own-path |access-date=2023-01-19 |website=artuk.org |language=en}} signing the Vorticist's manifesto in the first edition of the literary magazine BLAST and contributing to their inaugural exhibition. She and Jessica Dismorr were the only female members. Saunders was fluent in both French and German and during World War I worked in the office of the United Kingdom Government Censor.{{cite book|author=Catherine Speck|publisher=Reaktion Books|year=2014|title=Beyond the Battlefield, Women Artists of Two World Wars|isbn=978-178023-374-1}}

Saunders exhibited with the London Group in 1916, but from 1920 she increasingly turned away from the avant-garde and adopted a more realist style, working in still life, landscapes and portraiture, and latterly exhibiting with the Holborn Art Society.

Despite her long career, fewer than 200 of her works are currently known. She was included in the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University when it hosted an exhibition entitled The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London and New York, 1914–18 in late 2010.[http://nasher.duke.edu/exhibitions_vorticists.php Nasher Museum] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130307052709/http://nasher.duke.edu/exhibitions_vorticists.php |date=7 March 2013 }} Retrieved 17 September 2010 Saunders died of accidental coal gas poisoning at her home in Holborn, London, on 1 January 1963. Later that year, her sister Ethel donated three of her Vorticist drawings to the Tate Gallery, and one to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

In 1996 Richard Cork wrote:

:"Since Saunders' early work earned her a respected place in experimental circles, the gathering obscurity of her later years seems cruel. She endured the neglect with uncomplaining stoicism, for her innate warmth prevented her from succumbing to bitterness."

In 2022, her painting Atlantic City known from a photograph in BLAST, was found beneath the painting Praxitella by Wyndham Lewis.{{Cite web |date=2022-08-21 |title='Fit of pique': lost vorticist masterpiece found under portrait by contemporary |url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/aug/21/lost-helen-saunders-vorticist-masterpiece-found-under-wyndham-lewis-portrait |access-date=2022-08-21 |website=the Guardian |language=en}}

• Abstract Multicoloured Design, c.1915. Gouache, watercolour and graphite on paper. Tate.[http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/saunders-abstract-multicoloured-design-t00624]
• Monochrome Abstract Composition, c.1915. Ink, watercolour and graphite on paper. Tate.[http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/saunders-monochrome-abstract-composition-t00622]

• Drawings Gallery Display - Helen Saunders, The Courtauld Gallery, London, 14/10/2022-29/01/2023{{Cite web |title=Vorticist composition, blue and green {{!}} The Courtauld Gallery Collection Online |url=https://gallerycollections.courtauld.ac.uk/object-d-2016-xx-20 |access-date=2024-03-04 |website=gallerycollections.courtauld.ac.uk}}
• Women in Abstraction, Centre-Pompidou, Paris, 05/05/2021-23/08/2021{{Cite web |date=2021-07-19 |title=Women in Abstraction |url=https://www.centrepompidou.fr/en/program/calendar/event/OmzSxFv |access-date=2024-03-04 |website=Centre Pompidou |language=en-EN}}
• Blast to Freeze, Les Abattoirs, Toulouse, France, 24/02/2003-11/05/2003{{Cite book |title=Blast to freeze: British art in the 20th century ; [on the occasion of the Exhibition Blast to Freeze: British Art in the 20th Century, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, 14 September 2002 - 19 January 2003 ; Les Abbatoirs, Toulouse, 24 February - 11 May 2003] |date=2002 |publisher=Hatje Cantz |isbn=978-3-7757-1248-4 |editor-last=Hughes |editor-first=Henry Meyric |location=Ostfildern-Ruit |editor-last2=Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg}}
• Modern Art in Britain 1910-1914, Barbican Art Gallery, London, 20/02/1997-26/05/1997{{Cite web |date=1997-02-20 |title=Modern Art in Britain 1910-1914 {{!}} Barbican |url=https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/1997/event/modern-art-in-britain-1910-1914 |access-date=2024-03-04 |website=www.barbican.org.uk |language=en}}
• Helen Saunders (1885-1963), Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 09/01/1996-03/03/1996; Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, 16/03/1996-20/04/1996
• Vorticism and its allies, Hayward Gallery, London, 27/03/1974-02/06/1974{{Cite book |title=Vorticism and its allies: Hayward Gallery London [27.3. - 2.6.1974] |date=1974 |publisher=Arts Council of Great Britain |isbn=978-0-7287-0034-5 |editor-last=Engert |editor-first=Gail |location=London |editor-last2=Hayward Gallery |editor-last3=Arts Council of Great Britain}}

• Kate Lechmere

{{reflist}}

• [https://artuk.org/discover/artists/saunders-helen-18851963 21 artworks by or after Helen Saunders] at the Art UK site
• Richard Cork, "Vorticists (act. 1914–1919)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/64450 accessed 2 July 2007]
• [http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=1899&page=1&sole=y&collab=y&attr=y&sort=default&tabview=bio Helen Saunders], Works in Tate Gallery collection
• [https://gallerycollections.courtauld.ac.uk/results Helen Saunders], Works at the Courtauld Institute

{{Vorticism}}

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Category:1885 births

Category:1963 deaths

Category:20th-century English painters

Category:Alumni of the Central School of Art and Design

Category:Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art

Category:Painters from London

Category:Vorticists

Category:20th-century English women painters