Collection: Edna Clarke-Hall   1879 - 1979  Follow artist

Edna Clarke Hall was a watercolour artist, etcher, lithographer and draughtsman who is mainly known for her many illustrations to Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Born in Shipbourne, she was the tenth child of the philanthropist Benjamin Waugh, who, with William Clarke Hall, founded the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC). The young Edna Waugh showed an early talent for drawing.

When she was fourteen, Clarke Hall arranged for her to enter the Slade School of Art. She studied alongside Gwen and Augustus John, Ida Nettleship, Ambrose McEvoy and Albert Rutherston, and made many drawings and etchings of her new friends. She won many prizes and certificates for her drawings and in 1897 was awarded a Slade scholarship. Although a couple of oil paintings, painted under Gwen John's guidance, exist, Edna's favoured medium as a painter was watercolour.