Permanent Collections

The Edna Manley Memorial Collection is a specialized collection (of the National Gallery of Jamaica) dedicated to the life and work of Edna Manley. Established by the Edna Manley Foundation and the National Gallery, the collection has been permanently deposited at the National Gallery of Jamaica. The Collection was spearheaded by the Honorable Aaron Matalon, O.J., Chairman of the Edna Manley Foundation, and Dr. David Boxer, Director Emeritus/ Chief Curator of the National Gallery of Jamaica. Various private and corporate collectors of Edna Manley’s work have donated major sculptures and drawings. The Collection forms the basis of the Edna Manley Galleries and is supplemented with some works from the core permanent collection of the National Gallery of Jamaica and loans from the Edna Manley Estate and private collections.

The following persons, organizations and companies donated works to the Edna Manley Memorial Collection:

• David Boxer Wallace Campbell Paul Chen Young Contemporary Art Centre
• Sonia Jones Michael Manley Rachel Manley Burnett Webster
• Edna Manley Fdn. ICD Group of Companies Aaron & Marjorie Matalon
• Olympia International Art Centre Pan-Jamaican Investment Trust

View Biographical information on Edna Manley.

THE EDNA MANLEY FOUNDATION

The Edna Manley Foundation seeks to promote the legacy of Edna Manley. The Foundation has funded various publications and exhibitions on her work, such as the retrospective exhibition Edna Manley: Sculptor (1990) at the National Gallery of Jamaica and the accompanying monograph by David Boxer. The Foundation has also produced a series of posthumous bronzes, most of them based on small terracotta’s, and provides scholarships to the Edna Manley College. In 2007 it inaugurated the Edna Manley lecture at the Edna Manly College for the Visual and Performing Arts.

GALLERY I

The first gallery opens with the small pen and ink drawing The Stork (1920), the only work in the display signed with the initials of Mrs. Manley’s maiden name ‘Edna Swithenbank’. The earliest Jamaican work in the room is Wisdom (1924), the artist’s first venture into woodcarving. Wisdom was in essence an experimental work in which the fluid Vorticist style of her other works of the period gave way to rigid frontality and geometric stylization reminiscent of Egyptian sculpture. Like most of Edna Manley’s symbolic male images, Wisdom is an abstracted portrait of her husband.

Edna Manley’s second major stylistic phase is represented by two major relief sculptures, the bronze Adolescence (1927) and the woodcarving Adam and Eve (1930). The ample, curvilinear forms seen in Adolescence are typical for this Neo-classical period. Adam and Eve has a more rectilinear structure, which announces the reconciliation of the two styles that .characterize her work of the 1930s. The woodcarvings of this period also testify to the artist’s rapidly developing mastery of her new medium.

Edna Manley’s work from the 1930s show a more conscious engagement with the Black Jamaican physiognomy and body language as can be seen in Man with Wounded Bird (1934) and Rachel (1934). The latter is now lost but is represented by the contemporaneous bronze maquette. With its elegance and purity of form, Edna Manley’s work of the 1930s is representative of the Art Deco movement in Jamaica, which also included the photographer Dennis Gick, the furniture designer Burnett Webster and the sculptor Alvin Marriot.
Edna Manley’s best known work Negro Aroused (1935) was the first of a series of political carvings that reflect the nationalist, anti-colonial ferment of the late thirties. The series is represented by the carving Prayer (1937) but Negro Aroused, the first modern Jamaican work to be acquired by the Institute of Jamaica, is an integral part of our main permanent exhibition and remains there. In this gallery is displayed the bronze maquette (1935) and famous photographs by Dennis Gick that capture the carving’s Art Deco aesthetic. The display also includes photographs of the abandoned 1977 monumental version, the plaster of the smaller 1982 version, and the posthumously produced Negro Aroused monument (1993) which is now located on the Kingston waterfront, along with the second cast of the monument’s powerful head.

The contrast between the ecstatic, spectacularly stylized sculpture Tomorrow (1938) – now destroyed but represented by the plaster of the 1985 version – and the stark social realism of the drawing The Dispossessed (1940) illustrates the rapid changes in Edna Manley’s work that preceded the romantic, visionary Dying God cycle (1941-1949). In this series, which was inspired by the atmosphere of the Blue Mountain landscape, she explored the opposing forces in nature in imagery with definite autobiographical overtones. Two examples are on display: New World/ Old World (1942) and the famous Horse of the Morning (1943, illustrated on cover), which was originally owned by her son Michael Manley. The themes from the Dying God cycle lingered on in the 1950s, in such works as the MountainsInto the Sun (1954). (1952, 1972 cast) and the silkscreen of the gouache

GALLERY II

Although the 1950s and 1960s were less active years for Edna Manley, she produced several works of historical significance. The theme of Moses first appeared in the watercolour Pillar of Smoke (1950) and reappeared in the 1960s, represented here by the 1992 bronze cast of the terracotta Moses (1965) and a drawing from the same year. Edna Manley used biblical themes throughout her work but the Moses theme also refers to Norman Manley’s political leadership in the years leading up to Independence.
During this period, Edna Manley carried out several major commissions. The mahogany relief He Cometh Forth (1962), a hopeful allegory of the land created on the occasion of Independence, was originally commissioned for the Kingston Sheraton Hotel and is now part of the Edna Manley Memorial Collection. Her other commissions remain at their original sites although the most important one, the Bogle monument (1965) in Morant Bay is represented by maquettes and studies. The imagery in the earlier watercolour I Saw My Land in the Morning (1960) is closely related to He Cometh Forth and Bogle and illustrates the iconographical continuities in Edna Manley’s work.

In the 1960s Edna Manley revisited an interest from her student days and produced a series of animal sculptures and drawings, such as the sculpture Tyger (1963), Owl (1963) and Bull (1964). The subject matter of these works, also, is related to the imagery of the land that preoccupied her during this period. The OwlTyger and Bull are posthumous bronze casts. on display is the original terracotta while

Norman Manley died in 1969 and the tragic, intense works Edna Manley produced during the five years that followed are all expressions of her grief and anguish. These Mourning Carvings (1969-74), as they are collectively known, are well represented here by the woodcarvings Woman (1971), Faun (1972), and JourneyAngelAdios (1971) and the 1988 bronze of the terracotta Grief (1977).
Journey was also Edna Manley’s last carving after which she reverted to modeling and casting techniques. The 1970s were nonetheless among her most prolific years. Elements of the Mourning Carvings lingered, particularly in the Adam and Eve theme, which is represented here by the drawing Flaming Sword (1972). The subject of the land reappeared in works such as Rio Bueno (1975) and Mountains (1977), both represented by the 1995 bronze casts.
The themes of womanhood and the various roles of Jamaican women had dominated her work since the 1920s but took on a new significance in the late 1970s, in keeping with her own new status as grandmother and ancestor, as can be seen in the intense Shepherdess (1976). Inevitably, some of these works referred to the social and political turmoil of the late 1979s, such as Jamaica 1976 (1976) and, most dramatically, Ghetto Mother (1981), her response to the violence around the 1980s elections.
In 1985, Edna Manley stopped sculpting and turned to painting. Her final works have an ecstatic, spiritual quality and ponder the subjects of death and rebirth. On the eve of her death, she worked on a drawing of The Raising of Lazarus (1987) which concludes the display. (1974). The display also includes the 1989 bronze cast of the maquettes for two other key works of that period (1969) and

Other Key Works by Edna Manley on view at the National Gallery of Jamaica:

The Permanent Collection

• Beadseller (1992), bronze (unique cast)
• Male and Female (1933), ink on paper
• Negro Aroused (1935), mahogany, transferred from the institute of Jamaica in 1974.
• Prophet (1935), mahogany
• Diggers (1936), mahogany
• Moon (1943), mahogany
• Before Truth (1941), ink on paper
• Into the Sun (1954), ink and gouache on paper, transferred from the Institute of Jamaica in 1974.
• Growth (1958), mahogany, transferred from the Institute of Jamaica in 1974
• Ancestor (1978), plaster, gift of the Artist
• The Mother (1979), 1985 bronze cast (ed.2), gift of the Edna Manley Foundation.

The A.D. Scott Collection

• Generations (1943), mahogany, partial gift of A.D. Scott
• Hills of Papine (1949), mahogany, gift of A.D. Scott
• Creation (1978), charcoal and pastel on hardboard, gift of A.D. Scott
• The Scott (1980), ciment fondu, gift of A.D. Scott
• The Voice (1980), ciment fondu, gift of A.D. Scott

Photographs courtesy: Maria LaYacona and National Gallery of Jamaica.