Nerine DESMOND (1908 – 1993)

BIOGRAPHY

Nerine Desmond was born in Constantia, Cape Town, the daughter of Nicolaas Johannes Smith, an Afrikaner clergyman, and Ivy Desmond. She studied at London’s Central School of Art in 1938, where she learned graphic-printing techniques; but was otherwise largely self-taught. Desmond was politically conservative, and once refused the use of one of her works on the cover of a novel by Nadine Gordimer [who went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature], stating that Gordimer was ‘not a loyal South African’.

A member of the South African Society of Artists and the rival New Group, she was influenced by a number of artists active at the time, including Gregoire Boonzaier and Frieda Lock, becoming well known for her portrait paintings and farm-related and rural subjects. Initially, she worked from a studio in Loop Street, Cape Town. Later, she painted at her homes in Hout Bay, Wynberg, Jonkershoek, and her last home in Onderpapegaaiberg, Stellenbosch.

In 1948 she painted extensively in South West Africa (now Namibia); and, in 1953, in Zanzibar and Mombasa, Kenya.

A South African 1961 one-cent postage stamp carried a design by Desmond and, in the same year, she was elected as Fellow of the International Institute of Arts and Letters. She exhibited in all three Quadrennials of South African Art between 1956 and 1964, as well as at the São Paulo Biennale, Brazil in 1961.

She exhibited with the Women’s International Art Club and the Royal Institute of Painters, and held solo shows in Johannesburg in 1962 and Pretoria in 1970. Her works are held in the numerous major collections and were acquired by HM Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, William Ormsby-Gore, 4th Baron Harlech and Alfred Beit, among others.

SOURCE
‘Nerine Desmond,’ Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerine_Desmond.