Jean Shepeard

Jean Shepeard: Discovery of a lost member of the Bloomsbury Set where she lived for many years. Drawings and sketch-books found in a concealed steel trunk on her death in 1990 in her 86th year.

In 1929 Jean Shepeard exhibited with Francis Bacon in his own Queensbury Mews studio when critics wrote "Miss Sheapeard's drawings of heads show great sensibility and beauty of line and are, in their bold unhesitating treatment, full of vigour and character."

In that same year she exhibited at Redfern Gallery with leading artists of the day - Augustus John, Lucian Pissaro, Paul Nash, Eric Gill etc.

In 1928 she joined the Emotionist Group, founded by R.O. Dunlop, consisting of painters, musicians, philosophers, poets and actors including Peggy Ashcroft with whom, as young starlets, she shared a flat for four years.

She exhibited with Vanessa Bell, Ben Nicholson, R.O. Dunlop, Frank Dobson and Epstein in Bloomsbury at The Modern Picture Library.

When she exhibited at The Alex Reid and Lefevre Gallery in 1933, the News Chronicle art critic, Gui St Bernard, wrote "Miss Shepeard is already mistress of the difficult art of elimination and art-lovers who like the excitement of mild speculation should not miss the chance of what might prove very profitable investments in the near future. Why doesn't everyone with a few spare pounds rush and buy Jean Shepeard's drawings?"

R.A.D.A. trained, Jean Shepeard performed in numerous plays, at every leading theatre and appeared with the leading performers - John Gielgud, Jack Buchanan, Edna Best, Anthony Quayle, Peggy Ashcroft, Sybil Thorndike, Edmund Gwenn, Lewis Casson etc.

In 1942 she appeared as Mrs Briggs in the film "Thunder Rock" with Michael Redgrave and went on to make many more films with the Boulting Brothers, many of her drawings are of people in and connected with the theatre and the arts: a young J.B Priestly, Peggy Ashcroft and Vanessa Bell among many others.

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