Madge Gill (1882-1961), was an artist who lived much of her life in East London. From a working-class background, neither Gill nor her art fit into the artistic mainstream of her time. In fact, she did not even believe that her works were her own, believing that a ‘spirit guide’ named Myrninerest was working through her. Gill’s artistic output was prodigious, and after her death, her son Laurie donated between 1,200 and 2,000 works to the London Borough of Newham (then East Ham Borough Council). Gill exhibited frequently during her lifetime, although not with the aim of selling works. Her art has gained more recognition over time, starting with an exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1968, and is now held in many important international collections.
In 2019 the William Morris Gallery staged an exhibition titled Madge Gill: Myrninerest, and in Spring 2021 an outdoor exhibition featuring Gill’s work is planned at The Line in East London. As part of Newham Heritage Month 2020, a self-guided walking tour was produced, linking places connected to Gill’s life in East London. More information on all three projects can be found at https://worksby-madgegill.co/.
Madge Gill, Myrninerest, 1920-1960. Postcard with colours in ink and simple grid patterns, the signature ‘Myrninerest’ emerging from the centre.
Photo Credit: London Borough of Newham, licensed under CC BY.
Early Beginnings:
The artist now known to us as Madge Gill was born Maude Eades, in Walthamstow, North London, in 1882. We know that her childhood was difficult: she was illegitimate at a time when this carried a large social stigma, and when she was nine years old she was taken to live in a Barnardo’s orphanage, although her mother was still alive. At the time it was common for children in orphanages to be sent to other parts of the British Empire for new opportunities, and Madge spent part of her teenage years in Canada. There are many stories of hardship associated with this scheme (Harrison, 2003; Moss, 2019), and Madge certainly returned to England as soon as possible, at the age of eighteen or nineteen.
When Madge returned to England she lived with an aunt, Kate, and worked as a nurse in Whipps Cross Hospital, Leytonstone. Kate introduced Madge to spiritualism (the belief in communication with spirits, often through mediums), which was then near its peak in popularity (Owen, 2004). In 1907 Madge married Kate’s son, Tom Gill. Together they had three sons, one of whom died during the 1918 influenza pandemic, and one stillborn daughter. Shortly after the death of her son and daughter, she suffered from a period of serious ill health, including a tumour which resulted in the loss of her left eye (Ayad, 2019b).
Arrival of Myrninerest, Madge’s Artistic Career Begins:
Madge Gill, A Wide-Eyed Face, 1920-1960. Postcard with a black ink drawing of a woman’s face, gazing to the left.
Photo Credit: London Borough of Newham, licensed under CC BY.
Not long after Gill returned to health in 1920, she experienced her first encounter with Myrninerest, who she believed to be a high priest from ancient Babylon and her ‘spirit guide’. Myrninerest’s name is often thought to mean ‘My Inner Rest’, suggesting that this encounter may have been a response to the difficulties she had faced in life, or perhaps a coping mechanism (Walter, 2020; Dutton, 2019). Under Myrninerest’s guidance, Gill began to produce a number of artworks in different formats, including drawings, paintings, embroidery, tapestry, and knitting. Gill’s artistic output was very prodigious, but she did not take credit herself for the many works she made. Instead, she believed that they belonged to her spirit guide and were his work alone.
In 1922 Gill was treated for a psychiatric illness after her husband became concerned at her behaviour, sleeping and eating patterns (Roberts, 2019). There was a link in the popular imagination between spiritualism and female hysteria (Porter, 2003), although it seems her treatment was very sympathetic for the standards of the time. We do know that she gave some of her spiritualist drawings to her doctor, Helen Boyle (Ayad, 2019a). Boyle passed the drawings to the Society for Psychical Research. The Society seems to have shown little interest, but this act of a physician taking seriously the artworks produced by a patient while acting as a medium shows how this type of art walked the line between suspicion of fakery or madness, and subject of serious study (Grant, 2020). It was after this period of in-patient treatment that Gill moved to Newham in East London, where she lived for the remainder of her life.
An Artist Assured of Her Own Vision
Many of Gill’s works can be described as line drawings. Often in black and white, patterns sometimes emerge from the swirling geometric shapes, while others depict stylised female figures or faces. The pieces ranged in size from postcards to immense pieces of fabric, too long to be unwound at one time in Gill’s home. Gill exhibited her work quite frequently, starting in the 1920s. Her art was also used at least once to illustrate a spiritualist-themed book (Roberts, 2019). In the 1930s there was an annual exhibition of work by East End amateur artists at the Whitechapel Gallery. Gill exhibited several times as part of this exhibition (until the catchment area changed in the 1940s and she no longer qualified), including some of her largest works. A newspaper article announcing a 120-foot-long fabric work by Gill as ‘the most important work’ of the eighth Autumn Exhibition of the East End Academy, describes her as “…a middle-aged East End housewife who has steadily refused to sell her work in spite of remarkable offers” (Morgan, 1939).
Gill’s refusal to turn her artistic endeavours into commercial success might sound surprising but fits with how she saw her art. For her, Myrninerest was the artist, and she was merely the medium he communicated with, and who turned his vision into reality. Her inner circle seem to have shared this view (Gill, 1926; Roberts, 2019). She, therefore, saw the artworks as his property rather than hers. She had no interest in exhibiting in commercial galleries, and if necessary, put ridiculous price tags on her work to ensure it would not be bought (Ayad, 2019b; Gosling, 2019). Pursuing her art in this way seems to indicate to us that Gill knew her own mind and engaged with the art world on her own terms. As stated in the catalogue of a 2020 exhibition on ‘the artist as medium’, Myrninerest “…provided her with a voice and a grand purpose, even if it was not technically her voice” (Aberth, 2020, p. 45).
Madge Gill, A Plant-Like Creature, 1920-1960. A hand-coloured drawing on a postcard of a plant-like creature, a little like a Venus fly trap.
Photo Credit: London Borough of Newham, licensed under CC BY.
Was Myrninerest a Way to Overcome Barriers?
We cannot truly understand such a personal experience as a ‘spiritually-inspired’ compulsion to create art. But an interesting point has been made by other writers about spiritualism and spiritualist artists like Madge Gill: that their belief in a higher power working through them may have helped them to promote their work at a time when it was difficult for female artists to do so (Walter, 2020; Ward, 2019). Spiritualism was at a peak of popularity in the 1920s when Gill began to create art (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a famous supporter), and so many people around her and in society at large would have believed in the spiritual influence on her works, just as she did. When we look at the facts of her life, Gill’s background, lack of artistic education, and status as a ‘middle-aged East End housewife’ do not suggest someone who later became a well-renowned artist. It seems certain that without Myrninerest and Gill’s belief in the other-worldly origin of her inspiration, the situation would have been different.
But despite these unusual artistic beginnings, we can nonetheless celebrate the fact that Madge Gill is a well-renowned, female, East End artist, whose struggle with social barriers, illness and disability did not prevent her from producing thousands of artworks in different formats. The walking trail linked above, as well as the increasingly frequent exhibitions featuring Gill’s work, are a good way to continue to learn more about her, while the large numbers of her works held by Newham Archives continue to honour her local connections.
Author
Erin Caswell is a freelance museologist and Director at Christie’s. She also edits the newsletter of COMCOL, ICOM’s International Committee for Collecting.
Website: https://saltertonartsreview.com
Sources and Further Reading
Aberth, S. (2020) ‘Spirit Voices, Women’s Voices: art and mediumship,’ in Aberth, S., Grant, S. Larsen, L. B. Not Without My Ghosts: the artist as medium. London: Hayward Gallery Publishing.
Ayad, S. (2019a) ‘Borderlands – Dr Boyle and the Genesis of Gill’s Art,’ in Dutton, S. (ed.) Madge Gill by Myrninerest. London: Rough Trade Books, pp. 107-110.
Ayad, S. (2019b) ‘Madge Gill: A Biography,’ in Dutton, S. (ed.) Madge Gill by Myrninerest. London: Rough Trade Books, pp. 235-244.
Dutton, S. (2019) ‘Introduction,’ in Dutton, S. (ed.) Madge Gill by Myrninerest. London: Rough Trade Books, pp. 11-12.
Gill, L. (1926) ‘Myrninerest: The Spheres’ [self-published broadsheet], reproduced in Dutton, S. (ed.) Madge Gill by Myninerest. London: Rough Trade Books, p. 67.
Gosling, E. (2019) The east London outsider artist who channelled her 'spirit possession' into beguiling images [Online]. Available at: https://www.creativeboom.com/inspiration/madge-gill/ (Accessed 22 January 2021).
Grant, S. (2020) ‘Spiritualist Sisters in Art,’ in Aberth, S., Grant, S. Larsen, L. B. Not Without My Ghosts: the artist as medium. London: Hayward Gallery Publishing.
Harrison, P. (2003) The Home Children: their personal stories. 2nd ed. Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford.
Morgan, L. (1939). ‘Woman’s 120 ft. Picture,’ News Chronicle, 31 October, p. 3. Available at https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0003214/19391031/032/0003 [Login required] (Accessed 22 January 2021).
Moss, E. (2019) ‘A Brief History of Child Emigration from Britain to Canada,’ in Dutton, S. (ed.) Madge Gill by Myrninerest. London: Rough Trade Books, pp. 36-38.
Murdoch, R. (2019). Artistic apparitions: the spirited works of Madge Gill [Online]. Available at https://artuk.org/discover/stories/artistic-apparitions-the-spirited-works-of-madge-gill (Accessed 22 January 2021).
Owen, Alex (2004) The Darkened Room: women, power and spiritualism in late Victorian England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Porter, R. (2003) ‘Introduction,’ in Porter, R., Nicholson, H. & Bennett, B. (eds.) Women, Madness & Spiritualism. New York: Routledge, pp. 3-28.
Roberts, V. (2019) ‘Star of Destiny: Madge Gill and Spiritualism,’ in Dutton, S. Madge Gill by Myrninerest. London: Rough Trade Books, pp. 73-76.
Walter, S. (2020) The Art of the Occult: a visual sourcebook for the modern mystic. London: White Lion Publishing.
Ward, C. (2019) ‘Witness of Earth… and beyond,’ in Dutton, S. Madge Gill by Myrninerest. London: Rough Trade Books, pp. 191-192.