Gerald Leslie Brockhurst

Brockhurst, an English painter and etcher, received his initial art training at the Birmingham School of Art, moving to the Royal Academy Schools in 1907 where he won many awards. The key works of his career are the portrait etchings executed between the World Wars.

He is probably best known for his etching masterpiece, 'Adolescence', 1932, depicting a naked young girl looking in a mirror. His prints are usually modelled after his drawings or paintings. He moved to Ireland with his first wife Anaïs in 1915, where he remained until 1919. This Irish period was one of the most productive and important of his career. During the 1920s he built a reputation as one of the outstanding printmakers of his generation. He emigrated to the United States in 1939, when he was at the pinnacle of his career, when his portraits fetched 1,000 guineas. He remained there for the rest of his life, becoming a US citizen in 1949.

Anne Hodge, April 2006