Ethel GABAIN
Ethel Léontine Gabain (1883-1950) worked in a number of media but is best remembered as a painter and as a lithographer. Early in her career while studying at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London, her imagination was captivated by the lithographic process. She quickly developed a predilection for a rich black and white color scheme over that offer by color. As a founding member of a lithographic artist society the Senefelder Club along her future husband John Copley, as well as Joseph Pennell and A.S. Hartrick, she championed the artform. Her portraiture of women has is unmistakably her own. Many of her compositions depict female subjects in melancholic states and demure positions, possibly reflective of her own poor health. However, her own female gaze empowered these quiet figures in a way that was absent in the male executed portraits of women. During World War II, she was commissioned to capture the life of children during these tumultuous times. During these years she created images of children and working women across Britain, shining a light on forgotten side of war, that is to say, the lives of those left behind the front lines. She was regarded highly during her life, quite uniquely positioned and successful enough as one of few artists of the day to make a living from the sale of her prints. She was a member of the Royal Society of British Artists, the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, and was elected president of the Society of Women Artists in 1940. Gabain created over 300 lithographs, most in small editions, mostly of 24.
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