"Please return in good condition to Gluck, no prefix, suffix or quotes."  That’s what Gluck wrote on the back of publicity prints of their paintings.  Their will to define themselves by their own standards extended not only to their name, but also to every aspect of their life.

Born Hannah Gluckstein on August 13, 1895 to Francesca Halle (an American opera singer), and Joseph Gluckstein (owner of the ubiquitous Lyon’s Corner House chain of tea shops, high class restaurants like the Trocadero, hotels, and catering services), Gluck was educated at the St. John’s Wood School of Art in London from 1913 to 1916.  Their parents disapproved of their artistic ambitions, but nevertheless gave them a trust fund on their 21^st birthday that allowed young Gluck to live a life of their own choosing.  They bought a studio in Cornwall to work with landscape artists of the Newlyn School, cut their hair short, and dressed exclusively in men’s attire.

The women Gluck became close to heavily influenced their art.  In 1923, they met American expatriate portrait painter Romaine Brooks, and the two painted portraits of themselves and each other.  Brooks’s painting of Gluck titled Peter (a Young English Girl) was controversial for its blatant androgyny and was shown in solo exhibitions in Paris, London, and New York.  When Gluck bought Bolton House in the Hampstead area of London in 1932, they entered into a relationship with society florist and decorator Constance Spry and began work on detailed paintings of flowers.  The two collaborated on an exhibition of Gluck’s work at the Fine Arts Society that featured floral arrangements in each room of paintings.  Spry popularized Gluck’s androgynous look into haute couture with fashion designs by her associates Victor Stribel and Elsa Schiaparelli.

Gluck’s most striking work was a double portrait of their next great love, Nesta Obermer, a socialite married to an American businessman.  This work celebrated what Gluck called their marriage to Nesta on May 25, 1936. Medallion pictured the two together at a performance of Don Giovanni.  “They sat in the third row,” writes Gluck’s biographer, Diana Souhami, “and [they] felt [that] the intensity of the music fused them into one person and matched their love.”

But World War II led to disruption and depression.  Bolton House was commandeered for government use, and Gluck fell into a pattern of possessive and demanding behavior with Nesta, who broke off their relationship in 1944, destroying all artifacts of their life together.  Gluck began a troubled thirty-year relationship with Edith Shackleton Heald, the first female reporter in the House of Lords.  Moving into Healds’ house in Sussex, Gluck lived in often-fractious conditions with Heald and her sister Norma.  Largely retired from painting, they battled the British Board of Trade to establish standards for the naming and defining of pigments, oils, and canvasses. 

Gluck rallied in their old age to return to painting and organized an exhibition of fifty-two works at the Fine Arts Society in 1973, including Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light, a work that featured a decaying fish head.  The exhibition was successful with critics and buyers.  Gluck died at the age of eighty-two on January 10, 1978, having lived a life filled with both art and love.

Sources: “August 13: Gluck,” Jewish Currents; “Your Paintings: Hannah Gluckstein,” BBC; “Gluck,” GLBTQ; “The Painter Who Subverted Gender Norms Before It Was a Thing,” Jezebel; “Gluck: Her Biography,” Diana Souhami, Quercus, 1988.