British
Painter, sculptor, wood engraver, printmaker and book illustrator. She attended Beckenham School of Art 1919-20, and between 1919 and 1921 became acquainted with the work of Rodin and Lehmbruck. From 1921 to 1925 she attended Leon Underwood's School of Painting and Sculpture where contemporaries included Moore, Coxon and Pitchforth.

In 1922 she began wood engraving and in 1924 started to make carvings. In 1926 she married Blair Hughes-Stanton and collaborated with him in illustrations for Pilgrim's Progress, Cresset Press, 1926, and in murals for the World Fair, Paris, 1928. She subsequently received many commissions for wood engravings including work for Penguins Illustrated Classics and in 1931 received her first commission for a portrait sculpture.

From 1940-45 she worked in Canada and on her return to London began to make wood and lino block cuttings using colour. She exhibited regularly at the RA from 1934 becoming ARA in 1963 and RA in 1971, and showed in London and provincial galleries. In 1939 she represented Britain at the Venice International Exhibition and her work is represented in public collections including the Tate Gallery.

She taught at Camberwell, Westminster and St Martins and the Central Schools of Art and from 1966 taught wood and lino block printing at the RA Schools. Her many commissions included a mosaic floor for the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford. She established herself as a leading wood engraver in the 1920s with work of great delicacy and complexity. Many of her subjects in sculpture and prints are animals and children and her work was influenced by Brancusi and Gaudier Brzeska. All her work is elegant and concentrated, expressing the essential rhythms and detail of the natural world with economy.

LIT:
Catalogues for retrospective exhibitions at Whitechapel Gallery, 1967; RA, 1981
Selbourne: Wood engravings, Gertrude Hermes, Gregynog: Gwasg Gregynog, 1988.