Dora Gordine

British sculptor Dora Gordine later gave various years and places of her birth, for instance 1906 in St. Petersburg. This information still appears in many sources. Most likely, she was born in 1895 in Liepaja, Latvia to Jewish parents and grew up in Estonia. There, she first met various artists and exhibited her first sculptures. Gordine studied from 1917-22 first in Tallinn and later in Paris. She was fascinated by East Asian art at an early age and became well-known in 1926 with the bust of a Chinese person. She set up a studio in Boulogne-Billancourt near Paris. During the following years, she exhibited successfully in Paris and London.

As part of a multi-year trip to Southeast Asia starting in 1929, Gordine also opened a studio in Singapore and created four sculptures for the town house there. By marrying her first husband, medical officer Dr. George Herbert Garlick, she was automatically awarded British citizenship. She left Singapore and her husband in 1935. After her marriage to diplomat and professor of Russian culture Gilbert Richard Hare (1907-66) in the following year, she moved to London where she was introduced to London’s higher society, and whose members became her exemplars. In 1949 she became a member of the Royal Society of British Sculptors. The manor that was built for Dora and Richard Hare according to their own designs, called Dorich House, was turned into a museum. Two of her siblings, Nicholas and Anna, were murdered in Tallinn in 1941 by the Nazis.

Gordine’s work was influenced by Frenchman Aristide Maillol and by Asian art. In addition to typical ethnic heads, she created portraits come of academics, actors, dancers and members of the high society. The bronze figure Atalanta sized 40 x 44 x 29 cm was created 1946-47 and is kept in the Dorich House. Several casts were made in the 1950s. The sculpture symbolizes the Greek myth of the virgin huntress Atalanta.