David Boyd Haycock - A Crisis of Brilliance
© Edgar Astaire
Mark Gertler
Mark Gertler (1891-1939): Though born in London’s squalid
East End, Gertler’s parents were Jewish immigrants from Galicia. Brought
up in relative poverty, Gertler’s skills as a draughtsman eventually
brought him to the attention of the painter William Rothenstein, who recommended
him to the Slade School of Art. He started there in 1908.
Gertler quickly made his name as a highly accomplished portraitist. But filled
with a nervous energy, and passion for his work, Gertler struggled with depression,
and his passionate love for Carrington.
His friendship with the writers D.H. Lawrence and Gilbert Cannan helped him to
articulate his disgust for the Great War, and he became a pacifist and opponent
of the war – a spirit exemplified in one of his most famous works, The
Merry-Go Round (1916). ‘He hoards an insatiable vanity’, Virginia
Woolf wrote in 1918, ‘he has power & intelligence, & will, one
sees, paint good interesting pictures, though some rupture of the brain would
have to take place before he could be a painter.’