Gluck (or Hannah Gluckstein) Steyning's Famous Painter. Feminist and Most Original Thinker

Gluck got furious if her name wasn't pronounced to rhyme with "duck."

Gluck, born Hannah Gluckstein, (1895-1978) was the daughter of an opera singer.

She was an unusual, free-thinking person. Her biography, by Diana Souhami, recounts how Gluck always dressed in men's clothes, opened doors for ladies and pulled wine corks like a man.

One of Gluck's most famous works of art is a profile-portrait of herself with her lover at that time, Nesta Obermer. This appeared on a Virago publication of the famous lesbian autobiographical novel The Well of Loneliness by Marguerite Radclyffe Hall published in 1928.

Following Whistler's Example - Feminist Gluck Eschews Gender

Gluck received a private income which permitted her to indulge her energy in her work. Acclaimed for her floral paintings as well as her portraits, she had a strong sense of self. Gluck (rhyming with duck) hated it if anyone prefixed her name with "Miss." In her view, the paintings were important, not the gender of the painter. Diana Souhami describes what happened when Gluck was set to be included on an art society's letterhead: "A graphic designer... stuck in an ameliorating "Miss" and so Gluck instantly resigned, insisting that her name was "inked out."

On another occasion, she tried to sue a publisher who produced a novel with a protagonist called "Gluck." There was nothing self-effacing about this gifted painter.

Gluck and Nesta Obermer - YOUWE

Gluck moved to Steyning, a village not far from Brighton, in 1944 where she lived with Edith Shackleton Heald and her sister, Nora, at the Chantry House. But there was a problem. Edith's disapproving sister, Nora, made life difficult for the lovers and they were an awkward threesome.

A further complication was that Gluck was still in love with Nesta Obermer, the former lover whose picture appeared with Gluck on the Marguerite Radclyffe Hall novel. Gluck had met Nesta in 1936 while at Mozart's opera Don Giovanni at Glyndebourne and afterwards Gluck referred to this part of her life as YOUWE.

Gluck had always regarded Nesta as her "wife" although her lover was actually married to a considerably older man, an American called Seymour Obermer. Obermer helped to finance Nesta's lavish lifestyle. According to Nesta, she was madly in love with Gluck, but she was not prepared for the scandal, social annihilation and the reduction in income which would be precipitated by a split from Seymour. This might seem cold and calculating, but divorce in the 1930s was far different from how it is today.

Gluck never fully recovered from this intense but unsatisfactory love affair.

Nora is Scandalised by Gluck and Edith

Gluck had been longing for a real home, and when Edith and Nora invited her to live with them, she agreed immediately. Edith had been a special correspondence for theLondon Evening Standard and she also worked for the Express, Sunday Express and Daily Sketch. Previously Edith had a love affair with the poet William Butler Yeats, who had stayed at the Chantry House. Yeats had been dead for five years when Gluck moved in with the two sisters.

Nora was scandalised by the relationship between her sister and Gluck and so friction ensued. There were nasty, petty arguments, insults, jealousy and tears. Nora's friends supported her against Gluck, but Edith refused to give up her lover. As a result, Nora always retired to bed immediately after supper and refused to rise until lunchtime. She visited friends just to get out of the house. Gluck and Edith carried on just as before, visiting the theatre to see the latest plays, for example Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan. Edith had a special affectionate name for her lover, "Darling Grub."

Disgusted by Gluck and Edith, Nora Moves Out

Nora said the two women were "disgusting people," and eventually she moved out when Gluck paid her off with half the value of the house from her own "Trust." Nora took up residence at Wykeham Terrace in Steyning. Moving day was 14 February, 1948 and at that time, Nora was sixty-five years old. Later, Gluck expressed her sorrow that Nora felt she had to leave her own home. Nora was a journalist and editor and she worked for the magazine The Lady until she retired in 1954.

Gluck's final work was called "Rage, rage against the dying of the light" (after the Dylan Thomas poem) and consisted of a decomposing fish head lying on a beach.

Edith died on 4 November, 1976 and Gluck's death followed fourteen months later on 10 January, 1978, aged eighty-two. But Nesta had the last laugh. She outlived Gluck and was asked if she wanted anything of Gluck's for a keepsake.

"Oh, a few of her fine-haired brushes," she said airily.

Sources:

• Souhami, Diana, Gluck, her Biography, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2000.
• Adapted from: Cameron, Janet, LGBT Brighton & Hove, Amberley Publishing, 2010.