Gwynneth Holt

Wednesbury, England, 1909 - 1995

Keywords

Female

About Mesee biography http://eynsham-pc.gov.uk/processtype.asp?GalleryCatID=97&ProcessType=6
Gwynneth Holt, who died in February 1995, was better known during her twenty-one years in Eynsham as Gwynneth Gordon, wife and latterly widow of Eric Gordon, sometime Bishop of Sodor and Man (and Eynsham History Group's last President).

She was born Rose Gwynneth Holt in 1909, the eldest of three daughters of a well-established Wednesbury manufacturer, and educated at St Anne's Convent, Birmingham. She later studied sculpture at Wolverhampton College of Art where she met TB Huxley-Jones whom she married in 1934. Both these talented students were awarded places at the Royal College of Art, Gwynneth refusing her place since she thought her acceptance could impoverish her sisters. Despite the lack of further tuition, but encouraged by the Wolverhampton College Principal, R.J.Emerson, she proceeded to exhibit her work at the Royal Birmingham Academy from 1930 onwards. In 1938 Huxley-Jones became Head of the Sculpture Department at the Aberdeen College of Art, and from that time they both exhibited at the London, Scottish and West of England academies, the Society of Portrait Sculptors and the Paris Salon. Among the awards Gwynneth won were the Feodora Gleichen award (for 'outstanding work by a woman sculptor') for her 'Mother and Child' exhibited at the Royal Academy, and two at the Paris Salon for 'Arts Decoratif and for sculpture. A set of her wartime figurines of a semi-humorous character, which were cast by the Bovey Tracey pottery, is now in the Imperial War Museum. While living in Aberdeen she also exhibited work in ivories, woods, copper, terracotta and bronze in London and Edinburgh.

Gwynneth and her husband moved to Broomfield, Chelmsford in 1949 where they shared a large studio in their garden and both achieved high personal success. Huxley-Jones's brilliant, imaginative figures gained him wide recognition, and he undoubtedly influenced Gwynneth's own style, although her life studies at that time may be perceived as more naturalistic that the style of her husband's large symbolic works.

One of Huxley-Jones's commissions was the Fountain of Joy, to be seen near Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park. Shortly after his death in 1968, the large figure of the west wind was stolen from the fountain. Gwynneth, a very petite person, undertook the strenuous job of copying and replacing the figure to her husband's original design so that, today, the fountain is complete and appears unaltered.

The demonstrable piety of many of Gwynneth's exhibits created a demand for interpretations of Christian figures and symbols. Eight churches in and around Essex contain her important representations of such figures, and there are other such works traceable to her 'Chelmsford phase'. The Parish Magazine of Stock Harvard (May 1955) contains the following comment about the figure of Christ on the rood beam at All Saints Church: "The figure speaks to us of eternal wisdom combined with eternal youth, and there is about the whole figure and its expression a strength and calmness which communicates itself to people who look at it long enough with a really open mind ... The figure has that strange factor of timelessness which some of the medieval artists secured."

Both Huxley-Jones and Gwynneth were visiting sculptors to the Hopkins Centre, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, USA in 1963, and again in 1968; two known examples of her terracotta figures remain there. An unknown number of her carvings and sculptures are much cherished private possessions. In Malta, the doctor who helped Bishop Gordon when he was taken ill there, will on the slightest provocation show visitors his most loved treasure, Gwynneth's slender ivory carving of 'Girl with Cat'. Two publications refer to her ivory- carving; the dust-cover of Barnes's "Modern Ivory Carving" shows her 'Family Group', and the introduction, 'A visit to an ivory carver's studio' concerns Gwynneth and her work with numerous illustrations. Four publications refer to her 'Aberdeen phase', and during that time, in 1943, the late Charles Wheeler proposed her membership of the RBS. In 1952 she was elected a Fellow.

Following her marriage to Bishop Gordon in 1971, Gwynneth continued to produce figures and portrait heads in the Isle of Man and later in Eynsham from 1974. The limewood figure of St Leonard in the chancel of Eynsham's Parish Church (shown above) is a beautiful reflection of her study of medieval carving. Her later figures which were very popular were mainly stylised bronzes; these express the qualities of serenity and love which were obvious in Gwynneth's own character and personality.

Examples of her work may be seen in the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Chelmsford; Stock Harvard Parish Church, Essex; Balsham Parish Church, Cambs; St Andrew's, Hornchurch, Essex: Downham Church, Essex; Methodist East End Mission, London; Navestock Church, Essex; Buxhall Church, Suffolk; St Leonard's Parish Church, Eynsham.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Joan Weedon Eynsham Record 14 1997 pages 33-37

Wikipedia Biography

Loading ...