Maeve Gilmore
Self-Portrait with Charcoal Greetings Card
£2
A limited edition greeting card featuring the work of Maeve Gilmore, exclusive to House of Voltaire.
Finishing
A6 greeting card with white envelope
Courtesy the estate of Maeve Gilmore
About The Artwork
Much of painter, writer and illustrator Maeve Gilmore's work was autobiographical. Beginning with assured early self-portraits and still-life studies, Gilmore developed more explorative narrative works influenced by the modernist and avant-garde movements she studied during her travels through mainland Europe.
About Maeve Gilmore
Maeve Gilmore’s (b.1917–d.1983, London, UK) exhibiting career began in the late 1930s at the Wertheim and Redfern Galleries, following her enrolment at the Westminster School of Art. However, it is a trajectory that was gradually cut–short; initially by War, then by motherhood and later by the work and career of her husband, Mervyn Peake. Gilmore wrote a memoir of their life together which was published as A World Away in 1970, and gave a lot of her time to promoting, publishing and exhibiting Peake’s work.
Despite this Gilmore continued with her own artistic and literary projects, exhibiting at the Langton Gallery in 1979 and writing and publishing a number of short stories. In 1981 she published a children’s book Captain Eustace and the Magic Room: the characters of which were dolls made by Gilmore and their story was set in the family home 1 Drayton Gardens in Chelsea, which itself featured the murals that she painted throughout the house.