Joyce Bidder 

(Wimbledon, London 1906-1999)

At the Forge, 1930

pencil and watercolour on paper

20 x 13.4 cm. 

signed lower right 'JOYCE BIDDER 1930'

in a period frame

Provenance

Given to Cyril & Billie Watford, thence by descent.

Joyce Bidder was primarily a sculptor, with a strong, linear style informed by a kind of classical modernism we associate today with municipal frescoes and sculptures of the era, (think of Eric Gill & the BBC building). Yet her work had a feminine delicacy unique to itself, an irony not lost today if we look at Joyce's modest legacy as a female sculptor in a decidedly masculine world, relegated to her own bubble in Wimbledon, where she worked out of a purpose-built studio, shared with her life-long love, companion and fellow artist, Daisy Borne (1906-1998).

It was an unassuming, wisteria-covered space with large double-height doors to facilitate the logistics of monumental sculptures, incongruously situated on a quiet, suburban street of Edwardian houses. Originally built for Charles Doman, an architectural sculptor (known for the decorative facade of Liberty's), it was acquired by Joyce and Daisy, perhaps with grand ambitions, but which slowly ebbed away as they eked out a quiet life together, ultimately making art for their own pleasure in Virginia Woolf's proverbial "room of one's own". 

Although Joyce exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy from 1931 to 1957, she retreated from that spotlight. She was a Fellow of the Royal Society for British Sculptors, but found her comfort zone as a member of the Society of Women Artists, where she showed over sixty works between 1933 and 1971, as well as at the Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors and Engravers - amassing a large collection of contemporary miniatures along the way. And so, it was not until 1987 that Joyce and Daisy would have their own dedicated exhibition, at The Fine Art Society on Bond Street, as organised by Peyton Skipwith, who had become interested in their work whilst preparing another exhibition, 'Sculpture in Britain Between the Wars', in 1986.