Long Ago at The Slade

On October 24, 1956 a piece appeared in The Times newspaper with this headline and under the byline of “a correspondent”. 

Its was subtitled “Learning to draw whilst Tonks looked over your shoulder.” It is almost certainly an account, written by Diana Orpen and detailing how she came to be at the Slade School of art under Professor Henry Tonks.

Orpen disguises her true identity by adopting the persona of “Ernest”, a budding artist wanting to become an illustrator in black and white. She skilfully bends the truth, for instance claiming her father “knew little of art schools”, when in fact he was the well-known artist Sir William Orpen. She also details her interactions with Tonks, a tall, thin notoriously tough task-master, whom she describes could be “enormously stimulating and at the same time completely crushing”. She also describes incidents between Tonks and other students which are most likely her own experiences. Why she chose to do this is not clear, but may reflect the expectations of women’s roles the time, or simply a wish for anonymity, even though Tonks had died in 1937.

The newspaper clipping shown here comes from the from the Gillies family archive section of The Collection. 

The full text is reproduced here