Olga Edwardes
Olga Edwardes | |
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Born | Olga Florence Solomon 1915 |
Died | 23 July 2008 Elstree, England | (aged 92–93)
Occupation |
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Spouse(s) | |
Parent(s) |
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Olga Florence Edwardes Davenport (c. 1915 – 23 July 2008)[4] was a South African-born British actress and artist, born in c. 1915.
Personal life[]
Her father was Joseph Michael Solomon, an architect partner of Herbert Baker, but he committed suicide in 1920 at the age of 33, in Cape Town.[5]
Her mother was Jean Elizabeth Emily Cox née Hamilton (1885–1946), who was a divorcée when she married Solomon. She was a South African actress. They had a younger son, Paul Lionel Joseph (1918–1987).[6]
Her mother married another husband in 1922, Hugh Edwards, a company secretary in South Africa, thus was the stepfather of Olga and Paul.
Olga Edwardes married Anthony Max Baerlein in 1941, but he was killed in action later the same year.[B][9][10][11]
In 1946, she married her second husband Nicholas Davenport, an economist and journalist who was more than twenty years her senior.[4] He died in 1979; she died in Elstree in 2008.
Years 1930–1956[]
Olga Edwards, or maybe Olga Solomon, first exhibited her paintings in Cape Town at aged about 15. A year later, she came to England with her mother and her brother. She wanted to study painting, acting and ballet. First she danced in corps de ballet in a company of Anton Dolin.
Edwardes appeared in several films and plays from the mid-1930s into the mid-1950s.
Filmography[]
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
1936 | The Amateur Gentleman | Maid at inn | Uncredited |
1936 | The Man Who Could Work Miracles | minor role | Uncredited |
1937 | The Dominant Sex | Lucy Webster | |
1937 | Over She Goes | Reprimanded maid | Uncredited |
1940 | Contraband | Mrs Abo | |
1945 | Caesar and Cleopatra | Cleopatra's lady attendant | |
1950 | The Angel with the Trumpet | Monica Alt | |
1951 | The Six Men | Christina | |
1951 | Scrooge | Fred's wife | she played the unnamed wife of Scrooge's nephew Fred |
1953 | Black Orchid | Christine Shaw | she was a principal character |
Theatre work[]
- Repertory
- This is where Edwardes learned stagecraft. In Oxford rep there is a new play every week, including one that she took a bow in Romeo and Juliet with John Byron.
- in Royal Shakespeare Company, during the first half of 1936, at the new Memorial Theatre, Stratford-on-Avon.[12]
Twelfth Night Olivia Much Ado About Nothing Hero The Taming of the Shrew Bianca The Rivals Julia Melville Richard II Queen Isabella The Tempest Miranda The Merchant of Venice Jessica
- During the war, she spent a year with the BBC Repertory Company.
- West End
- As You Like It – Open Air 1934 – the stage débuts of Olga Edwardes and Frank Tickle
- Party 1860 – Open Air 1934
- Androcles and the Lion – Open Air 1934 – George Bernard Shaw watched it on its first night
- Romeo and Juliet – Open Air 1934
- Young Madame Conti – Savoy 1936
- Tsar Lenin – Westminster Theatre, 1936 – 1937
- Peril at End House, "Nick" Buckley, opened at Brighton, then Richmond and then moved to Vaudeville but only 38 performances in May 1940
- Twelfth Night – just two matinees for Twelfth Night holiday, on 30 Dec 1940 and 31 Dec 1940
- Landslide, Marian, Westminster – opened in 5 Oct 1943 until 6 Nov 1943
TV work[]
- before the war
Edwardes was an early player in the fledgling BBC television, which started in November 1936 until it was closed at the beginning of the War, and restarted in 1946.
Full Moon | (25 Oct 1937) | [13] |
The Sacred Cat | (12 Feb 1938) | [14] |
Gallows Glorious | (18 Nov 1938) | [17] |
Hay Fever | (25 Dec 1938) | [18] |
Dance Without Music | (23 Mar 1939) | [19] |
The Young Idea | (24 Feb 1939) | [20] |
Condemned to be Shot | (4 Mar 1939) | [21] |
- (She was also listed as an announcer on 30 March 1939, until her last appearance on 20 August 1939.[C]
Two Gentlemen of Soho | (28 Apr 1939) | [22] |
The Parnell Commission | (18 Jul 1939) | [23] |
- restarting in 1946
Lovers' Meeting or A Handbook to Courting | (12 Nov 1947) | [24] |
The Middle Watch | (5 Feb 1948) | [25] |
I Killed the Count | (14 Mar 1948) | [26] |
At the Villa Rose | (28 Nov 1948) | [27] |
October Horizon | (11 Jul 1950) | [28] |
A Scandal in Bohemia | (27 Oct 1951) | [29] |
Au Clair de la Lune | (29 Jul 1954) | [30] |
Family Business | (30 Oct 1955) | [31] |
Years 1956–2008[]
In fact since her marriage in 1946, she led a new career, as salonnière in the house of Hinton Waldrist manor. Her husband had bought it in 1922,[D] and now together they entertained, they held court, to the most influential radical artists, economists, philosophers, and politicians of the day at grand gatherings. Both she and her husband were long-time leading Fabians – she had known Harold Laski quite a while. Nicholas Davenport worked with Alexander Korda then joined Harold Wilson with the National Film Finance Corporation. Even though a Fabian,[E] he still kept friend with R. J. G. Boothby and close to Winston Churchill.
Thus Olga Davenport carried on the line which had been part of history for more than 350 years.[F] She was, as a young woman, an astounding beauty. She was also an impressive creative force. It is a heady combination. Men chucked caution to the wind. There is a bust of Olga by the sculptor F. E. McWilliam; two portrait drawings of her in her collection by Theyre Lee-Elliott, and another gouache drawing of her dancing also by him, with a verse by the artist on the reverse dedicated to her. His was not the only verse inspired by Olga's muse: another was from A. P. Herbert on the train to and back from Frinton-on-Sea.
Is he so mad who travels to the shore
Then back at once to where he was before?
Does not the ocean under Olga's sway,
Commit the same sweet folly twice a day?
Thus the mad fish pursue the moon in vain,
But will, as happily, pursue again.
Thus climbers, having made the steep ascent,
Salute the stars, and then return – content
She had been trained in painting, and returned to that art form following her acting career. In fact when she entered into the theatre, between performances she studied at the Westminster School of Art with Mark Gertler and through him and his wife,[G] met Matthew Smith and Ivon Hitchens. In 1956, following a career as an actor with mostly minor roles in films, she returned to studying · fine art · painting at the Chelsea Polytechnic · at the Royal College of Art · and at Peter Lanyon's school in St Ives, Cornwall. Davenport was not merely an accomplished artist, or a collector; but her deep friendships with British artists from the 1950s onwards place Davenport as a key and perhaps surprisingly influential figure in the British art scene of the time. In St Ives, Davenport was to meet and befriend some of the greatest British artists of the 20th century and during her life she acquired important paintings for her own collection, including works by Patrick Heron, Roger Hilton, Terry Frost, and William Scott. She spent hours at Eagle's Nest, and Elm Tree Cottage. She sat on the board of the Bear Lane Gallery and formed relationships with influential people such as Clement Greenberg and Pauline Vogelpoel. She had a studio in the south of France.[H]
She exhibited with the London Group and with the Women's International Art Club. Since then she has shown in a number of group exhibitions including an Arts Council tour, at the Leicester Galleries, at the Whitechapel, the A. I. A., the Drian Gallery,[32] Galerie Creuse, Paris, Athens School of Fine Arts, 'Women in the Arts Today' at the Northampton Museum and Art Gallery, the Bear Lane Gallery in Oxford, Grabowski Gallery,[33] and at the Demarco Gallery.
She had two one-person shows at the Piccadilly Gallery in London's Cork Street in 1969,[I] and in 1976;[J][34] and in 1978 she had a solo show of oils at the Oxford Gallery.[K]
Her later work is mainly concerned with the depiction of landscapes and is recognised for the use of gentle, yet dynamic colours which reduce forms to abstracted shapes. She uses broad, fluid brushstrokes of colour to capture the outlines of natural environments. The painted landscapes embody a delicate compromise between the wholly self-involved abstraction of modernist formalism and a fascinations with the experience and representation of the natural world. Her works are in the permanent collections of the Nuffield Foundation, St Anne's College Oxford, Warwick University, the Department of the Environment, and in private collections in England, Switzerland, South Africa, Belgium and the United States of America.
At her death, her own art collection was sold at auctioned, at a value around £550,000 (equivalent to £743,200 in 2019).[35][36]
Notes[]
- ^ His real name was Ernest Harold Davenport, but professional pseudonym was Nicholas.[1]
- ^ Her marriage certificate was given as 'Edwards'. Both mother and brother styled surname as "Edwardes" when they arrived in UK.[7][8]
- ^ Jump up to: a b With thanks to Simon Vaughan, Alexandra Palace Television Society for the following information: "Olga first appeared on 12 February 1938 as The Maiden in The Lanchester Marionettes. She appeared in a number of drama productions before being listed as an announcer from 30 March 1939, with her last appearance as an announcer on 20 August 1939. I have an audio recording of her in-vision announcement for 3 August 1939."[16]
- ^ and he lives there until he dies in 1979
- ^ In 1932 he was one of the founders of the XYZ Club to advise the Labour Party on economic and financial matters. The XYZ Club was a select dining club which brought City figures into contact with Labour's financial experts, such as Hugh Dalton, Evan Durbin, and Douglas Jay. And Nicholas Davenport of course. Hugh Gaitskell for instance, was early but not a founder.
- ^ Even as early as Mary Sidney in the beginning of the 17th century, she turned Wilton House into a salon-type literary group sustained by the Countess's hospitality, and who included Edmund Spenser, Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, Ben Jonson, and Sir John Davies. John Aubrey wrote that "Wilton House was like a college, there were so many learned and ingenious persons. She was the greatest patroness of wit and learning of any lady in her time." The Wilton Circle was an influential group of 16th-century English poets.
- ^ In fact by 1938 the marriage between Mark Gertler and his wife Marjorie Greatorex Hodgkinson was often difficult, punctuated by the frequent ill health of both. In 1939, Gertler committed suicide.
- ^ Olga Davenport (1915-2008) An Olive Grove, Mougins oil on canvas Painted in 1966.
- ^ 'Cliff, sun and sea' signed 'Olga Davenport. (on the reverse) and signed and indistinctly inscribed 'CLIFF, SUN AND ****/OLGA DAVENPORT/44 MARKHAM SQ./SW3' (on a fragmentary exhibition label attached to the stretcher)—oil on canvas 35¾ x 47½ in. (89.8 x 120.7 cm.)
This is how William Scott describes Olga Davenport's paintings at her first one-woman show at the Piccadilly Gallery in 1969I went into the Gallery last week and I thought again how beautiful your pictures look, quiet, personal, bold without aggression, lyrical colour, you have arrived at something very much your own, they are right. Pictures are either right or wrong and no one can really say why.
— (letter from William Scott to Olga Davenport, hand-written and dated 6th May 1969) - ^ The work was included in Olga Davenport's second show at The Piccadilly Gallery, 1976. Olga Davenport said of her work then "In front of a landscape today the modern artist is aware of a conflict between her subjective feelings and the detachment needed to create a work which will be a plastic object in its own right. I have tried to resolve this conflict and present a synthesis by using colour relationships to suggest space and rhythm, and minimal figuration to present a sense of place."
- ^ Signed and inscribed 'Olga Davenport/'Tuscan Landscape' (on the reverse), oil on canvas 26 x 37 in. (66 x 94 cm)
No. 21 Exhibited Oxford, Oxford Gallery, Olga Davenport, February – March 1978. From the Collection of the late Olga Davenport.
References[]
- ^ "Nicholas Davenport". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). OUP. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/31005. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
- ^ Walker 1984.
- ^ "South Africa, Cape Province, Western Cape Archives Records, 1792-1992," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q23Q-ZTWT : 13 March 2018), Hugh Edwards and Jean Elizabeth Emily Hamilton Solomon, 1 Jul 1922; citing Marriage, Cape Town, Union of South Africa, Western Cape Archives, Cape Town; FHL microfilm
- ^ Jump up to: a b The Times 2008.
- ^ Joseph Michael Solomon, architect partner of Herbert Baker, commits suicide in Cape Town
- ^ South Africa – a quarterly journal – 1918 October – December
- ^ Death 1946 Jean E Edwardes, Henley
- ^ Marriage in 1948 Paul L J Edwardes – Diana Rimer, Kensington
- ^ Winters 2009.
- ^ Allenby 2019.
- ^ Baerlein 1936.
- ^ Scott 1932.
- ^ Radio Times (25 Oct 1937), Full Moon, 57, BBC Television, p. 18
- ^ Radio Times (12 Feb 1938), The Sacred Cat, 58, BBC Television, p. 20
- ^ Sladen-Smith 1928.
- ^ Alexandra Palace Television Society | Olga Edwardes
- ^ Radio Times (18 Nov 1938), Gallows Glorious, 61, BBC Television, p. 20
- ^ Radio Times (25 Dec 1938), Hay Fever, 61, BBC Television, p. 20
- ^ Radio Times (23 Mar 1939), Dance Without Music, 62, BBC Television, p. 18
- ^ Radio Times (24 Feb 1939), The Young Idea, 62, BBC Television, p. 16
- ^ Radio Times (4 Mar 1939), Condemned to be Shot, 63, BBC Television, p. 14
- ^ Radio Times (28 Apr 1939), Two Gentlemen of Soho, 63, BBC Television, p. 17
- ^ Radio Times (18 Jul 1939), The Parnell Commission, 64, BBC Television, p. 16
- ^ Radio Times (12 Nov 1947), Lovers' Meeting or A Handbook to Courting, 97, BBC Television, p. 30
- ^ Radio Times (5 Feb 1948), The Middle Watch, 98, BBC Television, p. 27
- ^ Radio Times (14 Mar 1948), I Killed the Count, 98, BBC Television, p. 26
- ^ Radio Times (28 Nov 1948), At the Villa Rose, 100, BBC Television, p. 26
- ^ Radio Times (11 Jul 1950), October Horizon, 108, BBC Television, p. 38
- ^ Radio Times (27 Oct 1951), A Scandal in Bohemia (Ep 2), Sherlock Holmes, 113, BBC Television, p. 51
- ^ Radio Times (29 Jul 1954), Au Clair de la Lune, Children's Television, 124, BBC Television, p. 36
- ^ Radio Times (30 Oct 1955), "Family Business", The Makepeace Story (Ep 3), Sunday-Night Theatre, 129, BBC Television, p. 14
- ^ Drian Galleries
- ^ artist-info | Grabowski Gallery
- ^ Bridgeman | Olga Davenport
- ^ Oxford Mail 2009.
- ^ Christie's 2009.
Sources[]
- Allenby, Richard, ed. (2019). "Whitley Z9145 at Givendale, Ripon". Archived from the original on 23 Apr 2019.
- Baerlein, Anthony Max (1936). Daze, the Magician. Arthur Barker. Archived from the original on 29 Apr 2019.
- "Sale 5883: 20th Century British Art including The Olga Davenport Collection". Christie's. 25 Mar 2009. Archived from the original on 28 Apr 2019.
- Oxford Mail, George Gaynor (23 Mar 2009). "Oxfordshire woman's art collection goes under hammer". Archived from the original on 10 May 2019.
- Scott, Elisabeth (1932). "Shakespeare Memorial Theatre". Archived from the original on 14 Oct 2014.
- Sladen-Smith, Francis (1928). The Sacred Cat, A Play in One Act, Repertory Plays, No. 85. Illustrated – Alan G MacNaughton. London & Glasgow: Gowans & Gray.
- The Times (4 Sep 2008). "Obituary". London, England. p. 66.
- Walker, Joanna, ed. (1984). "SOLOMON, Joseph Michael". Artefacts: the Built Environment of Southern Africa. U Pretoria. Archived from the original on 13 Nov 2017.
- Winters, Edward (2009). "Chapter 1 Olga Davenport: the woman". Olga Davenport. Archived from the original on 1 Feb 2011.
External links[]
- 1915 births
- 2008 deaths
- British film actresses
- Minimalist artists
- People from Cape Town
- People from Johannesburg
- South African emigrants to the United Kingdom
- South African female dancers
- South African film actresses
- South African stage actresses
- South African television actresses