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Gladys Tuke

Sculptor Gladys Tuke (November 19, 1899-August 26, 1982) was born in Linwood, Pocahontas County. She studied sculpture at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, after which she spent about five years in Philadelphia, where she was taught by Albert Laessle at the Country School of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Laessle was a noted sculptor who specialized in animals, and that, combined with Tuke’s enjoyment of horseback riding, led Tuke to turn much of her work to horses.

Tuke became interested in pottery while teaching sculpture in the original art colony of the Greenbrier resort during the 1930s and soon began to combine pottery with sculpture. During World War II, she taught pottery and some sculpture at Ashford General Hospital, the U.S. Army hospital at the Greenbrier. When the war ended, she established a pottery and sculpture studio in White Sulphur Springs. In the summer of 1956, the Greenbrier art colony was reopened with her work and that of Jeanne Eleanore Coyne, a pictorial artist and teacher at Greenbrier College for Women in Lewisburg. Tuke used clay from her own land for all of her pottery and some of her sculpture. In addition to teaching, she conducted pottery demonstrations for guests of the hotel and for nearby clubs and schools.

She exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Woodmere Art Gallery in Philadelphia, the All-American Exhibition of Sculpture at the Cincinnati Museum of Art, and the Corcoran Gallery. Tuke died in Denmar Hospital in Pocahontas County.

Written by Judie Smith