Gertrude Hadenfeldt (1885-1975 )

“Where there are Goblins on the Mountains” or Kashmiri Mother and Child

Signed: “G. Hadenfeldt”

Titled (Obverse)

“Where there are goblins on the Mountains” does not refer to the mother and child but to the misshapen clouds on the mountains. It is a whimsical, unhelpful title, typical of Gertrude Hadenfeldt (1885-1975), the talented, shadowy figure that spent much of her life travelling alone, painting the remote parts of India and the Himalayas.

In 1918 she provided illustrations for Cornelia Sorabji’s Sun Babies, the study of Indian childhood first published in 1904. Sorabji, the first female graduate from the University of Bombay and the first female advocate in India, retained a lifelong interest in the conditions of Indian women and children, advocating the end of child marriage, as well as the Hindu custom of Sati, where a widow sacrificed herself on her husband’s funeral pyre. Her 1934 memoirs recall how, “among touring friends who stayed with me were Gertrude Hadenfeldt, the artist who illustrated one of my books about children, and whose paintings of Kashmir are so well known…”

That Sorabji refers to Hadenfeldt’s pictures as being “well known” when they are now forgotten, is evidence of how reputation can be buried by time. Perpetuation of legacy will generally fall to close family, friends, collectors, all with an incentive to lay out the details of an artist’s life when they remain fresh in the mind. Hadenfeldt lived and worked alone, she never married or had a family. Her vastly unconventional life, not exactly defying the standards of her period, but actually entirely oblivious to them, likely made it difficult for her to form lasting friendships. It is also telling that at no point in any of Sorabji’s books does she give a name to her illustrations, settling instead for the initials ‘GH.’ Seldom are artists well-served by discretion and it is perhaps for these unfortunate reasons that a painter as interesting as Hadenfeldt has faded without a trace.

Early Life

Gertrude Hadenfeldt was born in Hampstead in 1885, to German parents from the city of Lubeck. She studied at the nearby St John’s Wood School of Art under Edward Clifford (1844-1907), a figure on the pre-Raphaelite fringe whose landscapes impressed Burne-Jones. Clifford’s memoirs record his travels in Kashmir and his visit to Saint Damien (1840-1889) at the leper colony in Hawaii. It is perhaps through him that Hadenfeldt inherited her fascination for Kashmir.

An article from the Islington Gazette in 1904 reveals how Hadenfeldt was among 3 female students from the St John’s Wood School of Art to be awarded a scholarship to Royal Academy that year. The event was a significant milestone in the history of British Art, perhaps the first and only time that an award normally reserved for a single exceptional student, had been given to 3, all of them female. Her classmate Dorothy Webster Hawksley (1884-1970) was another of the recipients and it is interesting to compare the similarities in their paintings and differences in their present reputations.

INdia

Hadenfeldt likely came to India soon after her time at the Royal Academy (1906-1909). By 1912 she was a visiting member of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta, headed by Hara Prasad Shastri (1853- 1931), whose research laid some of the intellectual foundations for Bengali Nationalism. Her first solo exhibition at The Modern Gallery in New Bond Street in 1913 entitled “India: from the cities of its plains to the snows of the Kashmir” was the first of many dedicated to India, specifically the Himalayas, where she travelled extensively from Kashamir to Ladakh, through to Tibet and western China. The Bombay Gazette in June 1913, describes “a young and gifted artist who, finding herself in India... fell under the spell of its glow and colour, and resisting persuasion to return home, wandered the plains to Kashmir in leisurely fashion, learning Hindustani and wielding her brushes.”

A later exhibition in New York in 1921 recalls how she had spent “seven years in this curious land” contending with “fierce Asiatic winds, burning heat and bitter cold” and often riding “for weeks on the unkempt mountain ponies...”. It was likely during this period that she lived on a house-boat in the Kashmir Valley, producing illustrations for Cornelia Sorabji’s Sunbabies in 1918 and VC Scott O’Connor’s The Charm Of Kashmir in 1920.