Gerald Brockhurst (1890-1978)
Merle Oberon, 1937
POA
By descent through the artist's family
Royal Academy, 1933;
Dorset County Museum, Dorchester & Southampton Art Gallery, 18th Sept 1981-10 January 1982. no.55
Modern Masterpieces. Publ. Newnes, c 1935 p 4, first issue (Cover Illustration): "This striking and brilliantly executed painting of 'the female form divine' is one of the last of this Academician's works, and in it is summed up the knowledge of a lifetime'";
The Bystander, 3 May 1933, ill p 3 (as "A Study");
The Sketch, 3 May 1933, ill p 5;
The Tatler, 3 May 1933, p 21
Watson painted this model, whose name was Marishka (a Hungarian name), several times from the late 1920s. Watson’s obituarist in the Times wrote that ‘His chief interests in life were aptly summed up in the title of a picture he contributed to the Academy of 1922: Four Loves I Found, a Woman, a Child, a Horse, and a Hound.' One is tempted to add a Fifth Love – Marishka, who does not appear in the painting of his family. Our painting of her was exhibited at the RA in 1933, and reproduced on the cover of Modern Masterpieces in 1935, with a caption by The Sunday Times’s art critic, Frank Rutter: ‘This striking and brilliantly executed painting of ‘the female form divine’ is one of the last of this Academician’s works, and in it is summed up the knowledge of a lifetime.’ Watson’s obituary captured the man and his work with acuity: ‘Like many retiring people – for he was a shy and nervous man – Watson was apt to become rather reckless when he let himself go, indulging in violent contrasts of light and shade …. In appearance Watson was the typical artist: tall, bearded, and handsome. He was a man of charming manners, with a fund of whimsical humour under his shy exterior …. His best works were in a somewhat severe convention, incisively drawn and modelled with continuous gradations, with blacks and greys predominating in the colour scheme. He had the gift of making his sitters look well bred, and his painting of the nude was remarkable: for refinement of feeling …. From the suavity of his style in modelling he was generally more successful with women than with men.’
