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Norman Hirst:
Full length female nude, rear view, 1890's
Unframed (ref: 3620)

Oil on canvas, 24 1/2 x 13 1/4 in. (62.2 x 33.7 cm.)

Oil on canvas, 18 1/2 x 11 1/4 in. (47 x 28.6 cm.)

Tags: Norman Hirst oil Highlights of 20/21 Art Fair life drawing women

Hirst showed extensively at RA, also at The Fine Art Society, Abber Gallery and RI, but a lack of interest in original mezzotints after World War II (his main activity was as a print maker) prompted Hirst's executors to burn most of his studio collection. Some of what remained was exhibited in Three Bushey Artists by the Bushey Museum Trust in 1991.

Hirst trained at Herkomer's School in Bushey, receiving in 1885 a two-year scholarship.  He remained at Herkomer's until 1895 and it is likely that this life study dates to the same period. 

While in Bushey Hirst learned his engraving and mezzotint skills at the fine art printing studios of H T Cox, and after he moved he continued to use the studios for mezzotinting, at which he was an expert. His reputation was mainly as a mezzotint engraver of works by Gainsborough, Lawrence, Watteau and Romney, and in 1917 he was called as an expert witness in a notable court case in which an attribution was disputed. (Hirst's opinion that the work was not by Romney was eventually borne out.) Hirst was made an associate of the RE in 1931. Frost & Reed published his works Sea Melodies and Capture and Agnew The Mall and Gamme d'Amour.