Dalla Husband
Gladys Dalla Husband (March 3, 1899 – August 15, 1943) was a Canadian artist who was active in Paris and Mexico. Early Life. The daughter of Major Herbert Husband, she was born in Winnipeg and grew up on the family ranch in Vernon.The family moved to England in 1903 but returned to Canada in 1907, settling in Banff. She studied art with British ex-pat artist Jessie Topham Brown who was based in British Columbia. Career. After she received an inheritance from her grandmother, she traveled to London and then Paris where she pursued further studies in art . She exhibited at the Salon des Surindépendants there in 1929. While in Paris, she studied engraving with Józef Hecht. Her work was also shown at galleries in Paris, London and in Canada. Husband and her friend Alice Carr du Croft convinced Stanley William Hayter to teach them how to make prints. This was the start of Atelier 17. Around 1930, Husband and Hayter also began an affair that lasted until 1938. She worked with Hayter on two projects "Solidarité", published in 1936, and "Fraternité", published in 1939. Other artists participating in these projects included Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Wassily Kandinsky , André Masson and Yves Tanguy. Funds raised by these projects supported the Spanish resistance and Spanish children. Husband as Hayter's partner is obliquely mentioned in "Indigo Days" by Julian Trevelyan. Husband returned to Canada at the start of World War II. Mexico. In May 1940, she left for Mexico where a group of Canadian and other artists were working. She died in Mexico City at the age of 44, of blood poisoning after undergoing ear surgery. Her Mexican death certificate dated August 16, 1943 states that Dalla Husband, listed as a painter, died from postoperative cardiac failure ("Insuficiencia Cardiaca  Postoperativia") at the Cowdray Hospital, the American British Cowdray Medical Centre. According to the certificate, she is buried in Mexico City at the Panteón Jardín along with many distinguished figures from Mexican music, art and cinema. Collections. Two of her etchings along with Trevelyan's gallery brochure, "The Circulating Library of Pictures," containing her name as a contributor, are found in Trevelyan's scrapbook, datable 1938-1940, in the Tate Museum archives. In 1989, the Winnipeg Art Gallery acquired a substantial collection of Husband's art: significant oil paintings ("Machinist"; "Dream Landscape"; "Bird"; "Man, Horse and Cart") and several etchings . Biography. In 2015, Burnaby Art Gallery of University of British Columbia mounted an exhibition curated by Eva Tweedie: "Gravure Automatique: Dalla Husband at Atelier 17". The Annex Galleries, Santa Rosa, California, maintain a biography of Husband on their website. Silvano Levy has presented the Husband story and analyzed key works in a 2021 article in "Art Herstory".