A perfect little exhibition on the Isles of Scilly
I was in the most southwesterly pub in Britain, the Turk’s Head, on the Scilly island of St. Agnes (population: 75) when I noticed a poster advertising a local exhibition of the work of “renowned artist and birdwatcher Hilda Quick, 1895-1978.” I had stumbled upon an artist with a wonderfully sharp line and an even sharper eye I had never heard of her, but her work on the poster, “The Pursuit of Art,” was compelling. A stylish wood engraving from the 1920s, it showed female art students drawing a male life model. This was the new equality Hilda Quick would have discovered when she left her native Penzance to attend the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London in 1919.
