Margaret Gardiner (art collector)

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Margaret Emilia Gardiner

OBE for services to the Pier Arts Centre
Trust, Stromness. She was referred to as Margaret Emilia Gardiner Bernal on the list.

Biography

Gardiner was born in

Swedish Finn.[1] Her brother was Henry Rolf Gardiner
.

Gardiner was educated at the

Cambridge. There she read Modern Languages, but transferred to Moral Sciences, the Cambridge term for Philosophy. Her family was wealthy and she had no need to work, devoting her life instead to politics and the arts. At Cambridge she fell in love with Bernard Deacon, a scholar at Trinity but was shattered when he died from blackwater fever whilst working on Malakula in the New Hebrides, Vanuatu
in 1927 at the age of 24. She visited his grave there 56 years later and wrote a book, Footprints on Malekula: Memoir of Bernard Deacon, in 1984.

After Cambridge she spent a brief, but unsuccessful, time as an elementary school teacher in

Solly Zuckerman, Naum Gabo and others.[1][3]

She made her home at 35 Downshire Hill, Hampstead, close to the Heath where she swam in the ponds into her 90s.

Her son with Bernal was Martin Bernal (1937–2013), author of Black Athena.[1][4][5] Despite never marrying, Gardiner referred to herself as "Mrs Bernal". Bernal had married Agnes Eileen Sprague, a secretary, on 21 June 1922, the day after being awarded his BA degree when he was aged 21. As well as his son with Gardiner, he had two children with Sprague and one with Margot Heinemann.[6]

Politics

With Bernal, who was a

CND
.

In the 1970 general election

Ben Whitaker, Labour MP for Hampstead, lost his seat as a result of a far-left candidate standing whom Gardiner had financed.[1][nb 1]

Orkney

Barbara Hepworth's curved form which stood in Gardiner's back garden in Hampstead

She spent a large part of her life away from London on Rousay, Orkney, as a retreat. She was the founder, in 1979 of the art gallery, Pier Arts Centre in Stromness. One of the works there is "Curved Form (Trevalgan)" by her longtime friend Barbara Hepworth in 1956 which Gardiner kept on display in her back garden in Hampstead.[7] The work, named after a hill in Cornwall between Zennor and St Ives, was Hepworth's first entirely bronze work. She gave 67 works of art to the people of Orkney and "Curved Form" now sits outside on the centre's pier on the original plinth from Gardiner's garden.

Publications

  • Barbara Hepworth: a memoir. Edinburgh: Salamander Press. 1982.
    ISBN 9780907540106
    .
  • Footprints on Malekula: Memoir of Bernard Deacon. London:
    ISBN 9780907540458
    .
  • A Scatter of Memories. Free Association. 1988.
    ISBN 978-1-85343-043-5
    .

Notes

  1. ^ Although this is what the Guardian obituary says, the election results for 1966 and 1970 do not, however, support this: a left-wing Socialist Party of Great Britain candidate stood in 1966 when Whitaker won, but not 1970. Discussion on talk page please.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Morgan, Janet (5 January 2005). "Margaret Gardiner". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 6 April 2008.
  2. ISSN 1742-6588
    .
  3. ^ Gardiner, Margaret (1988). A Scatter of Memories. London: Free Association Books.
  4. ^ Richards, Rosalind; Chirwa, Vera. "Margaret Gardiner". Nchima Trust. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016.
  5. ^ Gill Hedley. "Bernal, Margaret Emilia". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Jan 2009; online edn, Jan 2011. Retrieved 16 August 2014.
  6. ISBN 978-0091395506
    .
  7. ^ "Pier Gallery Stromness, Permanent Collection, showing the Hepworth bronze work "Trevalgan" with Gardiner standing at the side, c.1980". Retrieved 24 October 2008.
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