Georgette Rondel (1915-1942) – Tea Time

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Georgette Rondel Biography

Georgette Rondel (1915-1942) was a French born artist mostly associated with Ireland. She was member of the avant-garde group of artists The White Stag Group, founded in London in 1935 by painters Kenneth Hall (1913-1946) and Basil Rakoczi (1908-1979). The group, whose initial aim was to promote the advancement of subjectivity in psychological analysis and art, took its name from the family shield of a patron of the group, the critic and writer Herbrand Ingouville-Williams. French by birth, Rondel had studied painting in Paris, and embarked on a career in graphic design with early successes including work reproduced in the important avant-garde graphic art annual Publicité Arts et Metiers Graphiques (1936). Rondel had likely met Rakoczi and Hall on one of their many visits to France in the 1930s, probably the summer of 1938, where through Lucy Wertheim, Hall had met Kandinsky, Wilhelm Uhde and Gertrude Stein in Paris. By 1939 Rondel had relocated to London with her German husband the linguist and salesman Rene Buhler. Now firmly established within the circle of White Stag artists, she exhibited as a group member at Fitzroy Street as well as Lucy Wertheim’s influential gallery at Burlington Gardens. Rakoczi, Hall and Ingouville-Williams were pacifists and, as the war clouds gathered over Europe in the summer of 1939, they left for Ireland in late August in the hope of avoiding the impending hostilities. Rondel joined the following month with her husband, as well as her lover, the artist Nick Nicholls (1914-1991).

Rondel worked in Dublin as a commercial artist, producing theatre designs and shop-window displays to supplement her promising career. She had two solo exhibitions with the pioneering Victor Waddington Galleries in 1940 and 1941 and had also been included in The White Stag Group’s first Dublin exhibition in April 1940 at 34 Lower Baggot St. The exhibition featured eleven artists, including Kenneth Hall, Basil Rakoczi, Mainie Jellett, Patricia Wallace, Barbera Bayley, Anthony Reford, Eliabeth Ormsby, Endre Roszda, Tony Rakoczi and Nick Nicholls. A critical success, the Irish Times praised the ‘fundamental freshness and originality’ of the artwork. However, Rondel’s exhibition at Victor Waddington in 1941 received criticism for the Matisse like quality of her painting in The Irish Times:

In 1941 she returned to London after her husband Rene Buhler had been deported from Ireland leaving Nick Nicholls behind, heartbroken. From London she wrote to Basil Rakoczi, ‘How is Nick? I hope he will get over it [her defection] soon. I want him to be happy so much, he could not have been with me … I miss him so much.’ A month later she wrote to Rakoczi again, ‘thank you so much for giving me news of Nick. I am afraid I always will love him.’

Georgette Rondel died later in 1942, there are conflicting reports as to why and how – Irish artist Patrick Scott stated in an interview that she died from kidney failure, but Joan de Frenay suggested it was suicide. Nicholls was understandably distraught at her passing and poured out his feelings in a poem, ‘My Love is Dead’, which he published in The Bell in November 1942:

MY LOVE IS DEAD
Her golden head
Is laid to rest,
Her hands are folded
On her breast,
The flowers have closed her eyes.
My love is dead, O
All on her death-bed lies.
Her mouth is pale
That once was red,
Her heart is still
Her voice has fled,
The flowers have closed her eyes.
My love is dead, O
All on her death-bed lies.
No need to tell
My words are long,
No need to talk
Of right or wrong
The flowers have closed her eyes.
My love is dead, O
All on her death-bed lies.

Rondel’s works are scarce due to her short but bright life, Basil Rakoczi referred to her as ‘an angel and a true Bohemian.’ 

References:

Kennedy, S.B., ‘The White Stag Group’ (Dublin: Irish Museum of Modern Art, 2005)

de Frenay, Joan, ‘Love in the Fast Lane’ (Trafford, 2008) p.28

Ryan, Vera, ‘Movers and Shapers 2: Irish Visual Art 1940-2006’ (Cork, The Collins Press, 2006) p.102

‘The Irish Times’, Friday, October 3, 1941, p.4

Georgette Rondel in the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

Available works by Modern British artists.