Erlund Hudson 1912-2011. Watercolour drawing. A Corner of the dressing room. Signed lower left. Inscribed to reverse on Royal Society of Watercolour Painters label with artists details dated (19)46. Original Bourlet frame and mount. Some very slight foxing to mount and image. 32 by 38 cms image. 54.8 by 67.8 cms in frame overall.
Watercolourist, etcher and designer Erlund (also known as Eleanor) Hudson was born in south Devon in 1911, the youngest of seven children. She attended Torquay School of Art and trained under Robert Sargent Austin and Malcolm Osborne at the Royal College of Art, gaining her diploma in 1937. With an RCA scholarship she travelled in Italy between 1938 & 39. Narrowly escaping interment at the outbreak of War. She returned to the United Kingdom and here she witnessed at first-hand the death and destruction of the London Blitz. Volunteering as a driver of a mobile canteen providing tea and sandwiches for the rescue services attending at bomb sites. Later, she recalled how after a block of flats were bombed, bodies and limbs were strewn around. Visiting her mother in Torquay, she witnessed a similar scene in the aftermath of a bomb destroying a school. Hudson didn't draw these scenes, instead preferring to concentrate on depicting women volunteers hard at work for the war effort. She produced hundreds of paintings and drawings during the war. At Robert Austins suggestion she contacted the War Artists Advisory Committee, who purchased six of her drawings, including Village Women Drying Wild Herbs and WVS Bandage Making. These were displayed in WAAC exhibitions at the National Gallery during the war and then acquired by the Imperial War Museum.
After the war Hudson designed costumes and scenery for Sadlers Wells and The Ballet Rambert. This interest in ballet led Hudson to meet Nesta Brooking, who had opened a ballet school in Primrose Hill. Hudson became the Brooking School of Ballet's artistic director. The two women became lifelong companions, and shared their lives until Brooking's death in 2006, aged 99. In 2007, the Imperial War Museum held a party in Erlunds honour, which she attended with two of her contemporaries, Phyllis Diamond and Malvina Cheek. As well as the Imperial War Museum, works by Hudson are held in the collections of the British Museum, the Wellcome Library and the Yale Center for British Art.