A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG WOMAN
GRUBBE, Margaret Julia Maria.
Archive of drawings, watercolours, and photographs.
England and Scotland, c. 1900 – 1960s.
One album, one sketchbook, printed prospectus for the Byam Shaw School of Drawing and Painting, group of c. 100 loose drawings and paintings, group of c. 50 photographs; some wear and marks but in very good condition overall.
A charming archive of the Suffolk artist Margaret Grubbe (1911–97), granddaughter of the painter John Seymour Lucas, comprising dozens of family photographs and over 150 of her drawings and watercolours, tracing her development as an artist from her childhood into middle age.
An only child, Margaret Julia Maria Grubbe came from a family of artists: her father was the Eton and Cambridge-educated army officer-turned-painter Laurence Carrington Grubbe (1854–1912), and her mother was the miniature painter Marie Ellen Grubbe (née Seymour Lucas, 1879–1951), both of whom exhibited at the Royal Academy. Her grandfather was the notable historical genre painter and theatrical costume designer, John Seymour Lucas RA (1849–1923), from whom she inherited Blythburgh Priory in Suffolk.
Through photographs we see Grubbe’s infancy, and through watercolours (largely landscapes and paintings of fairies; three or four of these, likely by the seven- or eight-year-old Grubbe, are inscribed … ‘To Dear Grandpa with much love from Pegs. Xxx hugs’) and pencil drawings of her and her parents we glimpse her childhood, much of it spent at her grandfather’s Arts and Crafts residence at Blythburgh. Several drawings by Grubbe, produced between the ages of eighteen and twenty and contained within the Red Book album issued by the Royal Drawing Society, were featured in the Society’s exhibitions and are here accompanied by typescript critiques by T.R. Ablett, the Society’s director, among them fairies and scenes from Hansel and Gretel and Sleeping Beauty, as well as anatomical studies and ‘snapshot’ sketches of dogs, pigeons, and seascapes. In 1933 she studied at the Byam Shaw School of Drawing & Painting in Kensington.
The dozens of drawings and paintings included here, though largely undated, reflect both the gradual refinement of Grubbe’s artistic style and the emergence of repeated themes in her oeuvre, namely landscapes and seascapes, the lily pond and gardens at Blythburgh, and studies of children, as well as the recurrent motif of flute-playing sprites and fairies, often clothed in leopard skin. Here, it is unclear whether life imitates art or vice versa: the drawings bear a striking resemblance to two photographs of a teenaged Grubbe in Blythburgh in similar costume, complete with satyr’s horns and flute in hand. Two of the drawings included in the archive (13 February 1900 and October 1901) predate Margaret’s birth and are most likely the work of her father, respectively depicting three fox kits and a Tengmalm’s (boreal) owl; Captain Grubbe had been the first to find the exhausted bird and its mate, which had strayed into Sussex from their native Russia and Scandinavia, and other drawings and photographs of his were used for the owls’ initial identification, causing much excitement amongst British ornithologists.
Margaret Grubbe became an accomplished painter of flowers, exhibiting in the 1940s and 50s, when she was a member of the Ipswich Art Club; in 1975, aged sixty-four, she married former RAF pilot Kenneth Hubbard (1920–2004).
The archive comprises:
1. [ALBUM.] Red Book System for the Discovery and Encouragement of the young Artist. Collection of original Drawings from Sight, Memory, or Imagination … Some Drawings will be selected from this Book for the Royal Drawing Society’s Exhibition. London, 1930–32.
Oblong album (270 x 345 mm), ff. 1, [23 (blank)], containing 37 tipped-in drawings in ink and wash, pencil, and watercolour (dated 1930–31); in the original red cloth-backed printed wrappers, Grubbe’s name and address entered in manuscript, as well as date of issue (23 January 1930); 6 typescript reports on Grubbe’s work by T.R. Ablett (dated January 1930 to January 1932) tipped in before title, headed ‘Confidential Criticism’, envelope adhered to inner cover containing a typescript letter to Marie Ellen Grubbe, dated 23 January 1930, as well as 4 part-printed certificates issued to Grubbe for drawing, dancing, and domestic science, 1922–32; small dampstain to upper outer corners.
2. [PROSPECTUS.] The Byam Shaw School of Drawing & Painting. Under the patronage of Members of the Royal Academy and Royal Water-colour Society, and other eminent artists. [London, Curwen Press, c. 1929.]
4to (210 x 180 mm), pp. 16, with 8 black-and-white photographic illustrations in the text; in the original teal printed wrappers; light central crease; loosely inserted are a manuscript note listing fees for the Byam Shaw School of Drawing and painting, dated 25 January 1933, and 2 printed notices from the women’s boarding house at Redcliffe Square; small rust stain at head from paperclip.
3. SKETCHBOOK of pencil and watercolour sketches of landscapes and plants. Scotland, 1945–6.
Oblong Winsor & Newton sketchbook (125 x 180 mm), pp. [56], some blank, comprising 37 pencil and watercolour sketches of landscapes and plants, including views of Loch Linnhe, Achintee, Glen Nevis, Mull, and Inverallochy Castle; bound in blue cloth; first leaf loose, some marks and wear to binding.
4. LOOSE DRAWINGS AND PAINTINGS (up to c. 400 x 300 mm) in pencil, ink, and watercolour, on paper and card, c. 100 items, dated 1900–1954. Comprising portraits and figure studies, landscapes and views, domestic and rural scenes, buildings, boats, animals, flowers, fairies and medieval scenes, as well as a dustjacket design for Mutiny on the Bounty.
5. PHOTOGRAPHS (from c. 65 x 110 mm to 170 x 220 mm), c. 50 in black and white, 1 in colour, some in duplicate, some in mounts. Showing Grubbe as a baby, child, adolescent, and in later years. With one photograph of her father, Laurence Carrington Grubbe, standing with brushes and palette beside his 1909 painting ‘Little Red Riding Hood’.
