Helen Wills

Rated by many authorities as the greatest woman player of her era, Helen Wills Moody won a total of 31 titles at Wimbledon and the U.S. and French championships and held her position at the top of the world rankings for eight years. She came east from California while still a pigtailed teenager to win her first major title in 1922. She would eventually win eight Wimbledon, seven U.S. and French singles titles, with her last being the Wimbledon championship in 1938. This impressive total of victories was accomplished despite the fact that she did not play in the U.S. championships after 1933 because of an estrangement with the authorities.

Helen Wills won the Olympic singles in 1924 without the loss of a set and added a second gold medal by taking the doubles with her coach, Hazel Wightman, who was almost 20 years her senior. In 1959 she was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

Helen Wills was educated at the University of California (Berkeley). She also wrote poems and illustrated books. She painted throughout her life and met several well-known artists. In the 1932 Olympic Arts Competition Wills submitted a total of 12 studies of fellow tennis players, including three self-portraits. The majority were probably etchings and woodcuts, although drawings are known as well. All images date from the 1930s, most of them were prints (formats between 15-20 x 20-15 cm).