A Rediscovered Watercolour Attributed to Gertrude Demain Hammond

For this Sunday’s private view, we are particularly proud to present what we believe to be an important rediscovery: a magnificent late-Victorian watercolour, previously catalogued as English School, whose authorship can now be compellingly associated with Gertrude Ellen Demain Hammond (1862–1952).

Trained at the Lambeth School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools, Hammond was an accomplished painter and illustrator whose refined draughtsmanship and sensitive handling of watercolour earned her election to the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours in 1896. Her career belongs to a generation of women who secured professional recognition within the artistic institutions of late nineteenth-century Britain.

Executed around 1895, this intimate portrait presents a young woman with the instruments of her profession: brushes lightly held, a palette at her side, and an unwavering gaze directed towards the spectator. The luminous washes, delicately modelled features and subtle harmonies of ivory, blue and warm brown find persuasive parallels in Hammond’s signed works. Possibly a self-portrait, it is an image of both exceptional beauty and quiet artistic self-possession.

While retaining the scholarly qualification “attributed to,” we believe the converging evidence makes a strong case for restoring this formerly anonymous work to Hammond’s œuvre. It is a rediscovery we are proud to share: an opportunity to look afresh at a gifted artist through a watercolour of remarkable presence and sensitivity.

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