Brenda Pye - Early Work

Early Work

Her paintings at this time were mainly figure paintings in oil on canvas, but she also excelled in pencil portraits and studies, and a pencil nude was her first major exhibited work, at the Royal Academy summer exhibition of 1932, when she was 24. She had by then (on 12 November 1929) married her first husband, E A R Landon, and is therefore listed in the published volumes of Royal Academy Exhibitors 1905-1970 (1973–82), and in The Dictionary of British Artists 1880-1940 (1976)), under her married name of Brenda Landon. The marriage ended in divorce during the Second World War. As a wartime resident of Lewes, she helped Mrs Byng-Stamper in the well-known art gallery she and her sister set up during the War in the stables of their house at Millers, in Lewes, and through her came across Duncan Grant, and sat for his life class as a model.

After the war, she was art mistress at Fairdene School for Girls, where she set up a pottery. Later, she established and ran the pottery at Glynde Place (near Glyndebourne). Most of her pottery is from this period.