Friday 6 October 2017

Playtime

Children at Play by Gertrude Halsband
A sunny day in 1976 and all the children are out playing, skipping, trying on hats, sailing boats and running.  A couple of mothers obvious to it all gossip over a wall. There is a bit of a drama with the crying child telling a tale and pointing.  Is it something the running boys have done or is it the boy with his slingshot who seems to be still in action and picking out his next victim?

The card is of a painting by Gertrude Halsband  whose paintings of cats seem to be popular judging from the internet but then it is their base for taking over the world.   The back to back houses and red brickwork on the card seem to suggest the action is taking place in northern England.  The only painting I found in a national collection is at the Tameside Museum and Gallery in Ashton Under Lyne so perhaps we might guess she was local to there.  The only thing for definite I can find out about her is her dates 1917-1981 and the fact that her work appears in the book "A World of Their Own: Twentieth Century Naive Painters". A mystery but her art lives on. 




Postcards for the Weekend theme - Children - skip along to Connections to the World for more. 
 

4 comments:

Maria said...

What a delightfully busy postcard. I would very much love to be a part of this scene ... thanks for sharing!

Mail Adventures said...

I think I had seen some works by this illustrator. I love the detail.

John's Island said...

Hi Joy, What a perfect card for the "children" theme! I got a kick out of the kid with the sling shot and his buddy in the brown shirt. They may be on the edge of trouble. :-)

Paul Cowdell said...

I don't know where she was from originally, but she lived the later part of her life in London. She was local to Knightsbridge and used to buy her artist's materials in Harrods. Through regular visits she got to know my mother, who worked there, and showed her a picture she'd painted of the Hans Crescent corner of the store. My mum arranged an introduction with the Harrods marketing department, and the picture was bought and reproduced as a greetings card by the store.

She died shortly before a solo show opened at a gallery somewhere in St Katharine Docks. I know, I was there: we arrived, and my mum didn't know that Gertrude had died, so it was rather awful.