Gerald Leslie Brockhurst
British, 1890 - 1978Young Womanhood (Anaïs), 1931
Not on view
Etching on paper
Dimensions15 3/4 × 10 1/2 in. (40 × 26.7 cm)
Image: 9 1/8 × 7 in. (23.2 × 17.8 cm)
Museum purchase with funds donated by members of the Flint Institute of Arts Print Club, 2008.252
British artist Gerald Leslie Brockhurst attended the Birmingham School of Art, where he showed a prodigious talent for drawing. He later went to Paris and Italy, where he studied the works of the Italian 15th-century painters. During the 1920s, Brockhurst embarked on a career as an etcher, achieving an exceptionally high degree of technical virtuosity. His subjects were almost exclusively female portraits, with his first wife Anaïs as his model.
Though a portrait, Brockhurst’s depiction of Anaïs has an air of mystery, not unlike the famous Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci (in the Musée du Louvre, Paris). Placed in front of a non-specific landscape, she looks to the side, her attention caught by something we cannot see.
