Greta Hopkinson, wood sculptor and contemporary of Gertrude Hermes

Gertrude Hermes

Gertrude Hermes, RA OBE was a British wood engraver, print maker and sculptor..She was born in Bickley, Kent.She studied at Leon Underwood School of Painting and Sculpture, from 1921 to 1925.She won the Prix de Rome in 1925....

 (1901–83), is now largely unknown but her work deserves recognition for its focus on liberating the tactile, sensual qualities inherent in wood.

Biography

Greta was born in West Didsbury

Didsbury

Didsbury is a suburban area of the City of Manchester, in Greater Manchester, England. It lies on the north bank of the River Mersey, south of Manchester city centre, in the southern half of the Greater Manchester Urban Area...

, Manchester

Manchester

Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

 in 1901. Her father was a British Engineer (designer of a shell propelled grappling hook used during WWI to remove barbed wire fences) and her mother an acclaimed Swedish singer. Greta went to Sandcotes School in Parkston, Dorset and then studied languages at Newnham College, Cambridge, becoming one of its youngest female graduates. For a while she was employed as Secretary to the Editor of the New Statesman, Clifford Dyce Sharp.
She married a Doctor, Harry Hopkinson, in the 1920s and travelled Europe with him. After the War they lived on the Isle of Wight before retiring to Pine Cottage, a house on the edge of the New Forest and previously the home of Gordon Jacob

Gordon Jacob

Gordon Percival Septimus Jacob was an English composer. He is known for his wind instrument composition and his instructional writings.-Life:...

, the well-known British composer.
Greta Hopkinson died in the mid 1990s in Brockenhurst

Brockenhurst

Brockenhurst is a village situated in the New Forest, Hampshire, England. The New Forest is a national park and Brockenhurst is therefore surrounded by woodland that attracts thousands of visitors all year round. The nearby towns surrounding Brockenhurst are Lymington and Lyndhurst. Brockenhurst...

, Hampshire

Hampshire

Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...

.

Work

It wasn't until after the death of her husband that she focused attention on becoming a wood-carver. In the process of mastering traditional techniques and achieving proficiency to the point of producing realistic figures, she became increasingly certain that imposing shape and structure on the wood ran counter to its own beauty and organic form. Her work then took a more naturalistic turn. Living in the New Forest she had access to a wonderful source for her art and imagination and the dead wood she collected from the rivers and streams, of all shapes and sizes, was taken home for contemplation and working. Each piece would be cleaned, interrogated with carving tools and gradually evolved and enhanced using natural polishes until she had revealed its essence. One of her pieces was gifted to the Commonwealth Institute for the Blind - its tactical quality revealing both her artistic values and love of the wood itself.

Exhibitions

In the early 1990s Greta’s work was exhibited, in the New Forest, alongside that of Royal Academy painter Barry Peckham, whose subjects include the Solent and Hampshire.