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Edna Manley was born in Yorkshire , England in 1900 to a Jamaican mother and an English father and died February 2, 1987. She studied at various art schools in England including St. Michael’s School of Art , London and privately with Maurice Harding the animal sculptor. She married Norman Manley in 1921 and in 1922 moved to Jamaica with him.
Art as it existed in Jamaica then could not have interested Edna. Sculpture was almost non-existent and painting was limited to a conservative watercolour landscape tradition, practiced essentially by amateurs. Yet, her own work changed dramatically after her arrival in Jamaica . There was a tremendous leap from the ‘romantic realist’ studies done up to the time of her departure from England to her first Jamaican work, the Beadseller. Shortly after, the Beadseller was to have a male counterpart, the Listener, after which Edna went to England in 1923 with her two plasters. The visit proved fruitful. She had the plasters cast into bronze and she was accepted into the Society of Women’s Artists and had Beadseller displayed in their 1924 Exhibition.
Back in Jamaica in early 1924, she quickly set to work with new carving tools and produced Wisdom and then the Ape. At that time, too, she began to model realistic portraits in clay, first of Norman and the two-year-old Douglas and then of a friend, Esther Chapman. Then, testing the possibilities of her new medium, she did a head of another friend, Leslie Clerk in wood.
The artist’s various submissions to the exhibitions of the Society of Women Artists began to be noticed and in 1927 two French Journals – Les Artistes D’Aujourd ‘Hui and La Revue Moderne – singled out her work for praise. In England too, the interest in her work began to grow and in 1929, Edna returned there with a group of recently completed sculpture including Eve, the Torso of a Woman, Boy with Reed and the Ape to exhibit in the Goupil Summer Exhibition.
In London on her 1929 visit, she discovered a new medium. She wrote to Norman , “I’m going eventually to carve stone”. This was the preferred medium of the direct carvers whom she would have been observing at that time, and on her return to Jamaica later that year she began to carve in imported materials – Hopton-wood stone, Caen stone, Portland stone and Sandstone.
cont.
Art as it existed in Jamaica then could not have interested Edna. Sculpture was almost non-existent and painting was limited to a conservative watercolour landscape tradition, practiced essentially by amateurs. Yet, her own work changed dramatically after her arrival in Jamaica . There was a tremendous leap from the ‘romantic realist’ studies done up to the time of her departure from England to her first Jamaican work, the Beadseller. Shortly after, the Beadseller was to have a male counterpart, the Listener, after which Edna went to England in 1923 with her two plasters. The visit proved fruitful. She had the plasters cast into bronze and she was accepted into the Society of Women’s Artists and had Beadseller displayed in their 1924 Exhibition.
Back in Jamaica in early 1924, she quickly set to work with new carving tools and produced Wisdom and then the Ape. At that time, too, she began to model realistic portraits in clay, first of Norman and the two-year-old Douglas and then of a friend, Esther Chapman. Then, testing the possibilities of her new medium, she did a head of another friend, Leslie Clerk in wood.
The artist’s various submissions to the exhibitions of the Society of Women Artists began to be noticed and in 1927 two French Journals – Les Artistes D’Aujourd ‘Hui and La Revue Moderne – singled out her work for praise. In England too, the interest in her work began to grow and in 1929, Edna returned there with a group of recently completed sculpture including Eve, the Torso of a Woman, Boy with Reed and the Ape to exhibit in the Goupil Summer Exhibition.
In London on her 1929 visit, she discovered a new medium. She wrote to Norman , “I’m going eventually to carve stone”. This was the preferred medium of the direct carvers whom she would have been observing at that time, and on her return to Jamaica later that year she began to carve in imported materials – Hopton-wood stone, Caen stone, Portland stone and Sandstone.
cont.
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