Hilda May Gordon

Hilda May Gordon (20 September 1874 – 21 November 1972) was a widely travelled British artist, known for her watercolour paintings of landscapes and figures.^[1]

Gordon grew up on the Isle of Wight to Scottish parents who had previously lived in South Africa.^[2] Gordon studied under Hubert von Herkomer at his art school in Bushey and was also taught by Frank Brangwyn.^[3] During 1900 she accomplished Brangwyn on a sketching trip to France.^[4] In 1907 she had a solo show at a Bond Street gallery.^[2] During World War I she served as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse in Europe and the Middle East, eventually returning to Britain in 1921.^[2] In 1922 she embarked on an independent round-the-world trip which eventually took six years to complete and involved visiting 22 different countries, including a number of the Balkan countries, Greece, India, China, Korea and Japan.^[4][2] She endured numerous dangers and stayed in both local huts and palaces, witnessed a volcano exploding in Bali and a royal funeral pyre in Siam.^[3][4] Gordon painted throughout the trip and her final stop before returning to England was in New York during March 1928, where she exhibited watercolours from her travels.^[4] A similar exhibition was held at the Fine Art Society gallery in London when she returned to England.^[2] Gordon became a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1928.^[1] She continued to paint and travel and in due course settled at Chelsea in London, where she died in 1972.^[1] The Martyn Gregory Gallery held a retrospective in Britain in 1987 and a further, short, exhibition of her work in New York in 2018.^[4]