Gertrude Mary Powys was born on 6 October 1877 at Shirley Vicarage in Derbyshire, the fourth child and eldest daughter of the Rev. Charles Francis Powys (1843–1923) and Mary Cowper Johnson (1849–1914).
Gertrude was educated at home by resident governesses and in 1901, aged 23, she was living at the family home, Montacute Vicarage, where she was tutor to her younger sisters Katie and Lucy.
A talented artist, Gertrude studied painting at the Slade School of Art and later at Academie de La Grande Chaumière in Paris, where she returned to study after her father’s death in 1923, before settling with her sister the author Philippa (Katie) Powys (1886-1963) at Chydyok in East Chaldon, Dorset.
In 1926, at her brother Littleton Charles Powys’s instigation, Gertrude painted the portrait of the Rev. Henry Robinson King (1855-1935), a favourite master of the Powys brothers at Sherborne School. The first sitting took place in Sherborne on 26 October 1926 and between that date and 6 November 1926 Henry sat seven times for what he described as Gertrude’s ‘approximately life-like’ portrait. Henry was then aged 71, having retired the previous year from teaching at Sherborne School, and Gertrude was 49. On 8 November 1926, Henry went to see the portrait and was told that the Powys brothers wanted to present it to him. Henry died nine years later, aged 80, and his funeral, which took place in Sherborne School chapel on 1 October 1935, was attended by Littleton & Mabel Powys. Three days later, on 4 October 1935, Gertrude’s portrait of Henry was displayed at the annual exhibition of the Sherborne Art Club. This previously unknown portrait by Gertrude Powys remains in the possession of the King family who have generously provided a photograph of the painting.
Gertrude was a regular exhibitor at the annual exhibition of the Sherborne Art Club and is known to have exhibited in the following years:
1931 – portraits of Miss Emily Clare and the Rev. C.F. Powys.
1932 – portrait of Littleton C. Powys [painted August 1925]
1933 – portrait of Rachel and other works.
1934 – portrait of W.E. Powys.
1935 – portrait in oils of the late Rev. H.R. King [painted 1926]
1936.
1937 – portrait of ‘Jasper’ (a delicate chalk head) and a still life.
1947 – portrait of Louie Wilkinson.
1948 – a fresh landscape of Dorset cliffs.
1950.
Gertrude’s paintings were also exhibited in Paris at the Salon de la Nationale, and in February 1937 she held her first solo exhibition at the Cooling Galleries in New Bond Street, London. Her woodcuts and wood engravings feature in three of Llewelyn Powys‘ books – A Baker’s Dozen, Earth Memories, and Rats in the Sacristy.
Gertrude Mary Powys died on 23 April 1952 at Moffat House, Weymouth & District Hospital.
In his autobiography The Joy of It (1937), Littleton Powys paid a loving tribute to his sister, saying ‘Gertrude with her happy temperament, rarely ruffled, with a gift for drawing and painting, Gertrude who in these latter years has been the very centre of the family’.
Online resources:
Jacqueline Peltier, The Powys Women (pdf)
Paintings of Gertrude Powys on the Art UK website
A number of paintings by Gertrude Powys are held at the Dorset County Museum
An insight into the Powys family through the diaries of Henry Robinson King by Rachel Hassall, 2020
Links:
The Powys Society
The Sundial Press
John Cowper Powys manuscripts and papers, National Library of Wales
The Powys Collection, Dorset History Centre
The Powys Family Collection, University of Exeter
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