Jan and Cora Gordon

Jan (Godfrey Jervis) Gordon (1882-1944) made art in a variety of media, including pencil, watercolour, etching, oil paint and tempera. The family collection of Jan Gordon's artworks spans a period of a quarter century. Here I show a small selection of seven examples, dating from between about 1910 and the mid 1930s, to illustrate the evolution in style. More can be seen here . The Belgian town of Ghent, watercolour, ca. 1910. The story of the exhibition held here by Jan and Cora Gordon is told here . The device of contrasting the emerging miners with the carefree scene in the square is discussed here . Etching, "The typsy dwarf," by Jan Gordon, exhibited Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Apparently this picture was on the wall in the Leeds house, but at some point it must have "walked." The image shown here is photographed from the reproduction in the 1912 edition of "The Studio". West Sussex, probably 1917/18, but possibly...

The art critic of the Sheffield Daily Telegraph on Monday 31 July 1911 reported on the 1911 London Salon. " The real Academy - I am writing to those who think the Academy representative of modern effort and therefore worthy of consideration - is the London Salon of the Allied Artists' Association, at the Albert Hall ." " There is not much sculpture of note, but Mr. T.W. Wilkinson's bronzes are admirably faithful and unforced. There is much good black and white, including some fine little etchings of Jan Gordon ; some water-colour drawings of Paul Emile ; also several miniatures and applied art. In the Albert Hall for the next month there will be on view honest, clean art ; as the Society itself says, untouched by favouritism and unrepressed by a selective jury ." A summary of the early shows of Jan and Cora Gordon can be found here and here  and accounts in "American Art News" can be found here .

The Hull Daily Mail for Friday 14 January 1916 contains a brief note on Jan and Cora Gordon 's return from the Balkans: " Mr and Mrs Jan Gordon have just returned from their adventurous journeys in the Balkans . The last of the British on the road from Karabevo [sic], they were entrusted by Sir Ralph Paget with the charge of the men of military age from the Red Cross Hospital in Serbia and contrived by finding a route hitherto unknown through the Montenegrin highlands to reach the Adriatic. Mrs Gordon herself served in the Montenegrin trenches ." Frontispiece of " The Luck of Thirteen ": " He invited Jo to shoot. She squashed past him; there was a knob at the back of the gun on which she pressed her thumbs, and she immediately wanted another pair with which to stop her ears. The gun jammed suddenly. The hero pulled the belt about, and Jo set it going once more ." pg. 58, Luck of Thirteen.