Gertrude Hermes was born in Bickley, England to German parents in 1901 and attended Beckenham School of Art and Leon Underwood's School of Painting and Sculpture. The sophistication of her work, primarily inspired by animals, nature and children helped to establish her as a leading wood engraver and carver, as well as a designer, in the 1930s. She also produced bronze portraits, glass panels and sculpture, and taught in a number of London art institutions; Hermes was elected an RA in 1971 and received an OBE in 1981.
Printmaker, sculptor and designer Gertrude Hermes was born in Bickley, England on 18 August 1901 to German parents. She attended Beckenham School of Art (1919–20) and Leon Underwood's School of Painting and Sculpture (1921–25), where she studied with Henry Moore, Eileen Agar, Vivian Pitchforth, Raymond Coxon and Blair Hughes-Stanton, whom she married in 1926. Hermes began wood engraving in 1922 and, two years later, she started producing carvings. Her deep empathy for the natural world inspired her early choices of subjects, predominantly plants, animals, birds and insects. At the same time, her figure compositions already showed monumentality and a sense of volume. Living in a basement flat in Chiswick, west London, Hermes and Hughes-Stanton were frequent collaborators. In 1926 they worked on illustrations for Pilgrim’s Progress published by Cresset Press, and also realised murals for the World's Fair in Paris in 1928. Subsequently, Hermes received many commissions for wood engravings, including for Penguin's Illustrated Classics. In 1930, Hermes and Hughes-Stanton moved to first to Suffolk and then to remote mid-Wales at Gregynog. After their separation in 1931, Hermes returned to Chiswick. During these difficult years – alone and with three children – she sculpted little: one of the few sculptures she produced was Bird in Hand (1931, Whitworth Art Gallery), depicting a squawking bird seeking to escape a clasping hand.
During the 1930s, Hermes designed architectural features for several buildings, including an inset pool with a central fountain and doors with decorative chrome handles for the new Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford upon Avon. This led to further commissions to design decorative and functional devices, such as letterboxes, door knockers, car mascots and pub signs. In 1932 she exhibited six flower designs at the Society of Wood Engravers, 'notable for exploiting the infinite varieties of texture obtainable in this medium' (The Manchester Guardian, 1933, p. 11). The same year, she made a portrait bust of A. P. Herbert, which led to commissions over subsequent decades for portrait bronzes (many of the sitters whom were by now among her friends), including novelist and poet, Naomi Mitchison (1958). In 1935 Hermes became a member of The London Group, exhibiting a standing figure and a group of two children in the group's 1936 exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries. The Manchester Guardian described these sculptures as 'the best pieces' of the show, adding: 'Gertrude Hermes is not afraid of losing the qualities of her art through squarely facing the complexities of life' (Manchester Guardian 1936, p. 6). In 1937 Hermes participated in Modern Domestic Metalware Exhibition, Victoria and Albert Museum (1937). In the same year, Britannia, an immense, 30 foot high, carved glass window which she designed for British Pavilion at the Paris International Exhibition, was highly praised, as were her glass panels at the New York World's Fair (1939). Her woodcut One Person (1937, Tate) representing a submerged swimmer, was shown at the 1938 Society of Wood Engravers exhibition, and was considered by Jan Gordon in the Observer to be 'a real masterpiece' (Gordon 1938, p. 12). During the late 1920s and 1930s Hermes also showed with several London commercial galleries with émigré connections, including St George's, Storran and Zwemmer. In 1940 Hermes had engravings selected for the British entry for the Venice Biennale, but the exhibit was cancelled due to the outbreak of war.
After spending five years in Canada during the war as an evacuee with her children, Hermes returned to London in 1945, where she producing coloured woodcuts and lino block prints, increasing considerably her scale of printmaking operations. She achieved complete mastery of this medium and pioneered a large-scale format, notably in Rooks and Rain (1950), The Ram (1958), and Stonehenge (1959), which won the Giles Bequest Prize awarded by the Victoria and Albert Museum (1960). Some of these later prints are among the most powerful works she produced. They range from very intimate and delicate depictions of plants and flowers to large symbolic compositions embracing a pantheistic vision. In 1967, the same year the Whitechapel Art Gallery held a retrospective of her work, Hermes suffered a stroke that left her unable to carve. To celebrate her 80th birthday, the Royal Academy of Arts devoted a retrospective to her in 1981.
Hermes received many honours and offical recognition during her lifetime: she was elected associate of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in 1949, and a fellow in 1951; an associate of the Royal Academy (ARA,1963), and Royal Academician (RA, 1971); and appointed OBE (1981). She also taught wood-engraving and animal drawing at London's Central School of Art from 1948, as well as teaching at St. Martin’s School of Art and Camberwell School of Art. From 1966, she taught wood and lino block printing at the Royal Academy Schools. Gertrude Hermes died in Bristol, England on 9 May 1983. A complete collection of her wood-engravings and her surviving sketchbooks is held at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and over 200 photographs of Hermes and her works are preserved at the Henry Moore Archive. Hermes' work is represented in many UK public collections, including the British Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Tate, and Leeds Art Gallery.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Gertrude Hermes]
Publications related to [Gertrude Hermes] in the Ben Uri Library