Recently, Borough Road Gallery was contacted by Sally Baldwin, whose husband, the artist Mark Baldwin, is the son of the painter Edna Mann. Sally generously shared photographs of paintings, drawings, and two surviving portfolios dating from Mann’s time in David Bomberg’s life drawing classes at the Borough Polytechnic during the late 1940s. Preserved within the family estate, these works offer a rare and intimate glimpse into the practice of an artist whose contribution to post-war British art is only now beginning to receive renewed attention.
Born in East London in 1926, Mann was described by her siblings as a “brave”, “vivacious” “lifeforce”. Educated first at Romford County High School for Girls, she later studied at the South-East Essex Technical College and Dagenham School of Art, where she encountered David Bomberg. Like fellow student Dorothy Mead, Mann was at first uncertain about Bomberg’s teaching methods, but quickly became committed to his radical approach to drawing and structure. In 1944 she followed Bomberg to the City Literary Institute and later, in 1946, to the Borough Polytechnic, now London South Bank University.
Works produced during this period include powerful charcoal drawings of Westminster Abbey, the interior of St Paul’s Cathedral, and a striking cityscape likely drawn from the roof of the Borough Road building itself. These drawings demonstrate Mann’s engagement with Bomberg’s belief that drawing should move beyond description to capture the deeper rhythms and energies of lived experience.
United by their admiration for Bomberg, Mann, Dorothy Mead, Cliff Holden and Miles Richmond formed the Borough Group in 1946, an exhibiting society that remained active until 1951. Before the group’s formation, Mann had accepted a scholarship to the Royal College of Art to study book illustration, but left after only a year due to what she experienced as entrenched opposition to Bomberg’s ideas within the institution. Her loyalty to Bomberg’s vision came at a personal cost. After becoming pregnant, she was reportedly encouraged to leave the Borough Group, as Bomberg did not believe it possible to sustain both motherhood and serious artistic practice.
Yet Mann continued to work throughout her life, combining motherhood, teaching, writing and painting. Raising three children with her husband Don Baldwin, she developed a practice that evolved significantly over time. Moving through Forest Hill, Romford, Leytonstone and Woodford, Mann taught art first at Lucton County Secondary Modern School in Debden near Loughton before later teaching at Burnt Mill School in Harlow between 1962 and 1978.
According to Don Baldwin, Mann gradually transitioned out of what he referred to as her “mud plum” period during the late 1940s and 1950s, increasingly embracing vivid colour and abstraction during the following decades. This shift is visible in works such as Bones and Roses, shared by the Baldwin family, in which structural discipline gives way to a more expressive and intuitive handling of colour and form.
1965 proved a particularly important year for Mann. Her work was included in the Harlow Arts Festival, she held her first solo exhibition of paintings, drawings and prints at the Drian Gallery in London — founded by the Lithuanian émigré Halima Nalecz — and she also achieved success as a writer. Having experimented with imaginative and observational writing since the late 1950s, Mann co-wrote the play The Leavers with Frank Hitchcock, Nigel Graham and Anthony Hall, which was broadcast by the BBC in February that year.
Today Mann remains well represented within the Sarah Rose Collection, yet opportunities to encounter her work publicly remain rare. The portfolios recently shared by Sally and Mark Baldwin therefore offer an important reminder of how much of this history survives within family collections and personal archives. They reveal not only the depth of Mann’s artistic achievement, but also the wider histories of women artists whose practices persisted despite institutional resistance, domestic expectations and historical neglect.
Borough Road Gallery would like to thank Sally Baldwin and Mark Baldwin for generously sharing these materials and photographs.
For further information regarding Edna Mann’s work, Sally Baldwin can be contacted at: sallyabentley@gmail.com or on 07875 104 637.
