The straw hat

The straw hat dates from the phase of Mark Gertler’s career when he enjoyed his greatest commercial and critical success, and ranked among Britain’s most talked-about younger artists. It follows the poignant portraits of his Jewish family and pre-dates his hotly coloured cubist semi-abstracts.

Gertler grew up in London’s impoverished East End. Handsome and a gifted mimic, he was also angry, egotistical and neurotic. He failed to land on a style or mode that satisfied him, yet his work is admired today: it is finer in the flesh - the operative word here - than in reproduction. Gertler moved among London’s modernist intelligentsia and, while admired by members of the Bloomsbury group, was excluded from their ranks. Befriended by Aldous Huxley, Katherine Mansfield and DH Lawrence, he is also known for his unrequited love of painter Dora Carrington. When a solo exhibition flopped and his marriage broke up in rapid succession, forty-seven year-old Gertler committed suicide.

The straw hat radiates an assurance that belies this tragic life story. Stylistically, it belongs to the classical movement immediately after the First World War that is sometimes known as ‘the return to order’. Cézanne, André Derain, Picasso (in his ‘Blue’ and ‘Rose’ periods) and, particularly, Renoir were all role models. Yet this painting is constrained by neither classical lines nor by Derain’s sombre colouring. It is, moreover, more solid and believable than the world of late Renoir: the anonymous young model is no fantasy nymph but is emphatically a ‘twenties’ girl, sassy and stylish. She gazes demurely beyond the viewer; her strap has dropped to reveal a shapely breast and she appears quite unconcerned. The still-life foreground is a juxtaposition of Cézanne in the apple and art deco in the jazzily coloured parrot figurine. But this is not deco brashness for its own sake: there is a clever correspondence between the still life and the patterned, floral headgear. In the model’s clothing, the risky salmon and flame combination is also cleverly negotiated. The impact of the painting is at once sensually appealing and intelligent, classical and decidedly modern.

Mark Stocker

This essay originally appeared in Art at Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2009).