Kaff Gerrard, née Katharine Leigh-Pemberton 

(1894-1970 Kent)

Landscape, c.1930s

oil on board

30.5 x 40.7 cm.

in its original frame, carved by the artist's husband, Alfred Gerrard

Provenance

the Estate of Katharine Leigh-Pemberton and A. H. Gerrard

Gerrard studied at the Slade School of Art where she met her husband, Alfred Gerrard, who later became the head of sculpture at the college. Alfred took it upon himself to bespoke carve the frames for all of Kaff's work.  The couple married in 1933 and lived in an old farmhouse in Kent, and Kaff spent her days painting on the Sussex Downs and South Downs. 

While she only had one public exhibition of her work during her own lifetime, joint with Alfred at Colnaghi's in 1931, in 1991 there was a retrospective at the Royal Museum and Art Gallery in Canterbury, and a number of British Museums acquired examples of her work, including Tate, the Imperial War Museum, and the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge. A similar landscape to the present painting  is  in the collection of Middlesbrough Institute of Art.