Madge Gill

1882-1961 · London, UK

An East London seamstress who lost a son and an eye within a year, then began drawing under the guidance of a spirit she called Myrninerest. She left thousands of works and sold almost none of them.

The life

Born illegitimate and hidden away, Gill was shipped to a Barnardo’s home and then to Canada as a child farm worker. Back in London she nursed, married, and suffered a brutal run of losses: a son to the 1918 flu, a stillborn daughter, and her left eye to illness. In 1920 the drawing began, mediumistic sessions that could last all night, sometimes by candlelight. She showed at East End exhibitions but refused to sell most work, saying it belonged to Myrninerest, not to her.

The work

Obsessive ink drawings of a wide-eyed woman’s face, repeated for forty years amid checkerboards, staircases and swirling architecture, on postcards up to bolts of calico ten metres long, worked without seeing the whole roll at once. London’s Newham council inherited a huge trove on her death.

Why we love them

The great London outsider. Grief walked into her house and she turned it into ten-metre drawings in the dark.

Go deeper

• Collection de l'Art Brut, Lausanne
• Where to see outsider art, our full list of museums and collections.
• The glossary, if any of the terms here are new.

Kindred spirits

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