Chronology
1879: Born Edna Waugh in a Kent oasthouse on 29th June to Sarah Elizabeth Boothroyd of Southport and Benjamin Waugh, Non-Conformist minister and founder of the NSPCC.
1893-1898: Enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College, London, where she won numerous prizes for drawing and composition. Despite taking lessons in oil painting from Gwen John, her friend and contemporary, she soon realised oil was not the right medium for her, "I wanted to draw a subject quickly, seize it, convey my impression", hence watercolour became her chosen medium.
1898: Married the barrister William Clarke Hall, who despite encouraging her through her student years was unable to understand and accept the way in which she wished to work. Her painting therefore became increasingly personal and private. She declares that she cannot understand his personal coldness towards her: it is not what what she expected or needs.
1899: Work first accepted at the New English Art Club along with fellow co-star and ex-Slade student Augustus John.
1902: The Clarke Halls bought Great House, a 16th century farmhouse at Upminster where Edna lived until the end of her long life. Inspired by the house, by her reading and her mood she developed a long running series of drawings illustrating Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. It is Edna's only literary source and many of the various styles and states of these numerous and obsessively produced drawings survive in public and private collections. Edna often felt herself to be Cathy living an equally intense and frustrating romantic existence as the heroine of the famous novel. It may be the only example of an accomplished artist devoting herself almost entirely to one literary source.
1904: Michel Salaman, having left the Slade and the art-world, marries Chattie Wake and resumes rural life in Devon but remains a close confidant.
1905: Justin born. Motherhood and her duties as the wife of a brilliant barrister (known particularly for the pioneering of reforms of Child Law for which he was knighted in 1932) reduce the opportunities of art to 'catching the moment' studies.
1907: The Slade Record 1893-1907, edited by John Fothergill, features Edna as a major artist alongside Augustus John and William Orpen. The reviewer for The Studio asks why Edna has not illustrated an edition of Wuthering Heights.
1910: Denis born on 4th July at Hornchurch. Exhibited 'Suggestions for Illustrations for Wuthering Heights' at the Friday Club.
1913: Edna's younger sister Rosa publishes The Life of Benjamin Waugh a biography of their father who had died in 1908 - "Flowers revealed to him the glory of God, for he had, with all his great practical force, a strong unconscious mysticism in his nature . . . Lover of roses, children and truth."
1914: Edna was persuaded to mount her first one-woman show at the Chenil Gallery in Chelsea after Tonks enthused of her "out of the common talent". It was a critical and commercial success.
(First World War 1914-18)
1915: Following many years of summer holidays in Cornwall the family bought a cottage at Gillan Creek, south of the Helford Estuary where they summered until 1927. This provided the setting for much of Edna's lighter family sketches as well as some reincarnations of 'Catherine' transposed from the Yorkshire moors to the Cornish coast.
1919: Suffers a nervous breakdown from which she was helped to recover by Henry Tonks and his friend, leading psychologist Henry Head, who encouraged her husband to respect her more as an artist. Willie then provided her with a studio of her own at Gray's Inn near the law courts. Becomes a student at the Central School of Art and Design to learn printmaking.
1924: The first of several exhibitions at the Redfern Gallery. Draughtsmen, edited by Albert Rutherston, published with Edna as a major featured artist.
1925: Paints a Valentine card for Michel Salaman, "I used to love kisses and so I do still."
1926 : Poems published. (Unillustrated). Edna's Poem-Pictures exhibited at the Redfern Gallery to great acclaim, ". . the most imaginative artist that we have in England" (The Times).
1927: A winter spent in the Egyptian desert following a serious attack of arthritis in her hands resulted in a new body of work.
1930: Facets published in a limited edition of 330 copies (with lithograph illustrations) and launched along with the Egyptian drawings at the Redfern Gallery to great acclaim as usual.
1931: Shell 'Lavenham' advertisement poster published.
1932: Sir William Clarke Hall dies of a heart-attack whilst sailing with a lady friend. A Trust formed by Edna's friends enable her to keep the Gray's Inn studio and she convinces her husband's trustees to allow her to stay on in her beloved Great House although with much reduced financial resources. Redfern Gallery exhibition.
1933: English translation of Georg Rendl's The Way of a Bee published with a frontispiece lithograph by Edna.
1934: Joint exhibition at the Redfern Gallery with Mary Potter.
1939: Retrospective Exhibition at Manchester City Art Gallery.
(Second World War 1939-45)
1941: Destruction of London studio and much of her work during the Blitz. Last Redfern exhibition.
1949: Last dated watercolour. Following increased suffering from arthritis in her hands Edna Clarke Hall ceases to paint.
1958: Mary Fearnley Saunder, Edna's niece, arrives to care for her aunt and remains with her until the end of her life - it is a happy and fruitful arrangement for both.
1971: Slade Centenary exhibition at the D'Offay-Couper Gallery. Edna's work there provokes considerable interest and thereafter many are granted their wish to visit the last of the 'great Slade ladies'.
1979: Forced to move out of Great House, because of structural deterioration, Edna dies soon after in a care home at Deal, Kent. Commemorative display at the Tate Gallery.
1985: 'Edna Clarke Hall' Exhibition at Sheffield City Art Gallery.
1989: Exhibition by Milne & Moller and Max Rutherston.
1994: Alison Thomas's Portraits of Women published - the first substantial biography of Edna and her artist friends.
1997: 'The Salamans: a family of artists' exhibition and catalogue by JWT Fine Art explores the interests and family of one of Edna's closest friends.
2006: Denis Clarke Hall dies. Abbott & Holder 'Gillan Creek' exhibition at which the Friends of the National Museum of Women in the Arts presents a talk on Edna by Alison Thomas.
2008: Abbott & Holder 'Wuthering Heights and Upminster Common' exhibition.
2011: The Laing Art Gallery's large watercolour of 'Catherine' is exhibited in the major Tate Britain Watercolour exhibition. It is a striking and important watercolour in which Edna places the persona of Cathy/herself in the rocky seaside cove that features so prominently in her many sketches of the family's holidays in Cornwall. Psychologically it represents an inverse schizoid doppelganger where the same blended characters appear in alternate places - Edna at Wuthering Heights and Cathy at Portscatho - as well as their more familiar settings. The internal and the external creative facets of Edna have met and combined to produce an icon that is as powerful as those of the leaders of British Romantic Art.
2012: Kathryn Murray is awarded an M.Phil. degree by the University of Birmingham for her thesis on 'Edna Clarke Hall's Poem Pictures in the early 1920s.'
2015: Max Browne publishes 'Edna Clarke Hall and Wuthering Heights' in The British Art Journal, vol. XVI, 2
(2018: The bicentenary of Emily Bronte's birthday during which a tribute to her most prolific illustrator is much hoped for)