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Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
GERALD L. BROCKHURST Jeunesse Dorée.
Etching, 1942. 273x223 mm; 10¾x8¾ inches, full margins. Third state (of 3). One of two artist's proofs, aside from the edition of 75. Signed, dated and titled "Ophelia" in pencil, lower margin. A very good impression.
Brockhurst (1890-1978) was born in Birmingham, England, and was brought up mainly by his mother, both in England and the United States. He started making etchings, primarily based on his paintings, in the early 1910s, encouraged by the English printmaker Augustus John (1878-1961).
The present etching depicts Brockhurst's mistress, Kathleen Nancy Woodward, to whom he had given the name "Dorette". Brockhurst and Woodward met in 1929, when Woodward, only sixteen, was working as a model at the Royal Academy. They moved to New York in 1939 and they married in 1947. The alternative title Ophelia references the tragic Shakespearean heroine of Hamlet and resembles Brockhurst's circa 1937 oil portrait of Woodward, also titled Ophelia and in the collection of the Royal Academy. Fletcher 80.
