Gerald Brockhurst

An English painter and printmaker, Brockhurst was born in Birmingham in 1890. He showed a great talent for drawing at the Birmingham School of Art and in 1907, he entered the Royal Academy Schools in London. He won a traveling scholarship in 1913 that took him to Paris and Italy, where he studied the works of the Italian 15th century painters.

Brockhurst resided in Ireland from 1915-1919 where he met painter Augustus John, whose painting style was influenced by contemporary French art. He would return to England in 1919 for his first significant gallery exhibition. He became an etcher during the 1920s, but by 1930, returned to painting and became a fashionable portrait painter, his sitters including Marlene Dietrich, J. Paul Getty and the Dutchess of Windsor. At the height of his success, Brockhurst settled in the united States in 1939.