Helen Saunders

Helen Saunders (Bedford Park, Ealing, London, 1885 – London, 1963) was an English painter associated with the Vorticist movement, one of the few avant-garde groups in early twentieth-century Britain. She matters as a pioneer of abstraction in Britain and as one of only two women in the Vorticist circle, alongside Jessica Dismorr.

At eighteen she enrolled at a newly opened local studio run by Rosa Waugh Hobhouse, who recognised her talent and encouraged her to study at the Slade School of Art, which she attended in 1907. She later trained at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, which offered more technical instruction. By 1912 her work was recognisably Post-Impressionist, and in 1914 she showed in the Twentieth Century Art exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery as one of the first British artists to work in a nonfigurative style. In 1915 she joined the Vorticists through Wyndham Lewis, signed the manifesto in the first issue of BLAST and exhibited in their inaugural show. During the First World War she worked in the office of the UK Government Censor.

From 1920 she moved away from the avant-garde toward a more realist manner, painting still lifes, landscapes and portraits. She fell into obscurity until recent decades brought renewed attention to her work. Fewer than 200 of her works are known today. She died in 1963 at her Holborn home from accidental coal gas poisoning.