Published: 26 January, 2012

When the Royal Shakespeare Company tore apart their 1930s Art Deco theatre and spent many millions transforming it, much of the original building was lost.

Yet the architects behind creating a new home for the most famous theatre company in the world were determined that some aspects of the original building were saved.

And some of the details kept back were the product of a remarkable sculptor whose name is little known outside specialist art circles.

Her name is Gertrude Hermes.

Now a new biography by Highgate-based art historian Jane Hill reveals the depth and level of Hermes work, discusses her place in the canon of 20th century art and reveals a person who not only produced extraordinary works but bucked the norms of society with a burning independence.

The book includes two photographs of her Stratford work.

Hermes designed the “Swan Fountain” and was responsible for interior fittings. One, featuring the masks of comedy and drama, was also salvaged.

Jane Hill has spent nearly a decade researching the book.

She was attracted to Hermes’s story, not just because of her art, but because so little was known about her.

“It’s lazy to describe the 20th century solely in terms of Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth or to agitate over who influenced who,” states Jane.

“They weren’t the only direct carvers and sculptors working. Others were breathing the same air and change was in the ether. Their motivations were similar. They were a generation who lived through two world wars, and then the Cold War.  And they were all makers. For example, Hermes carved wooden trenchers for her children to eat off because they broke the china.”

Gertrude’s childhood was spent as “...a harum-scarum schoolgirl and a Wouldbegood of the Edith Nesbit brand,” according to Jane.

Born in 1901, she came from a large and unconventional family: it gave her the basis for pursuing art as a career.

Her training started in earnest at the end of the Great War. She travelled to Germany to stay with an aunt who was an artist.

This showed it was possible to follow her calling and earn a living.

On her return to London, she had applied to the Slade – but the art college was full of returning war veterans, so she switched to the Brook Green School of Drawing, run by Leon Underwood.

Jane describes him as “...a maverick, utterly absorbed by his own imaginative explorations. He was a dedicated truffle hunter of non-Western art and surrounded himself with a considerable collection.”

The other key aspect was half its pupils were women.

And it was Underwood who encouraged Hermes to move from drawing and painting to sculpture.

“Underwood, part of the school of figurative modernism advocating direct carving had placed instruments at her disposal saying: here is a chisel, here is some stone. See what you can do.

“Hermes was better known as a wood engraver. Critic Albert Garrett wrote: “Hermes in engraving is what Hepworth is in sculpture.”

She is considered one of the finest of her generation, able to create marks with tools that others used as a template for what was achievable,” says Jane.

“Yet she produced more sculptures than prints and received more reviews for sculpture plus two retrospectives at significant galleries, the Whitechapel and the Royal Academy, in her lifetime.”

Hermes married artist Blair Hughes-Stanton in 1926.

They had two children and ran a lively house in Suffolk. As Jane describes it: “They were social arcadians intent on unfettered freedom, in love with a mystical vision of England.”

This comes through the work she was producing: Jane quotes Hermes’s sister May on the sculptor’s love of natural surroundings.

“I think we all sensed there was something special about Gertie and her relations with animals, trees, plants and insects.

She watched them so intently – seemed more finely tuned to all living things than most of us... hers was a gentle wildness... all that restlessness came from her wondering curiosity about everything round her.”

Hermes left her husband in 1931 because of his infidelity, and raised her children alone.

She made ends meet by teaching and was a role model for female students.

“Hermes’ Feminism was of the Winifred Holtby brand, ‘a fair field and no favour’,” says Jane. She helped break the mould when she became a fellow of the Royal Academy.

“Hermes was one of a handful of female academicians, and was responsible for the Royal Academy changing its ancient rules to allow women to attend the annual dinner in 1967,” said Jane.

Jane says she has always been fascinated in uncovering the stories behind works she admires – and with Hermes’s quality obvious yet her name not as well known as her talent suggests she should be, researching her life was a pleasure.

“I’m passionate about women artists who worked quietly away, against the odds in a predominantly male world, staying true to their vocation and living by their art,” she said.

• The Sculpture of Gertrude Hermes by Jane Hill is published by Lund Humphries at £45.