Edna Manley

Edna Swithenbank Manley, OM (28 February 1900 – 2 February 1987) is considered one of the most important artists and arts educators in Jamaica.

She was known primarily as a sculptor although her oeuvre included significant drawings and paintings.

Her work forms an important part of the National Gallery of Jamaica's permanent collection and can be viewed in other public institutions in Jamaica such as Bustamante Children's Hospital, the University of the West Indies, and the Kingston Parish Church.

Her early training was in the British neoclassical tradition.

Born Edna Swithenbank on 28 February 1900, Edna Manley lived out her early years in England with her cleric father, Harvey Swithenbank, her mixed Jamaican mother, Ellie Shearer, and her 8 siblings.

Ellie was the sister of Margaret Ann Shearer, who married Thomas Manley, and their son was Norman Washington Manley.

Her father died when she was nine, leaving his widow to raise all their nine children by herself.

Edna Manley was described as incredibly independent, rebellious and spirited, exemplified in the uproar and unrest she caused among her own family as she embraced her 'coloured' ancestry from her mother's side.

This ancestry had been swept under the rug due to the possible repercussions it would have had on not only her parents but the whole family during the racially tense times of the early twentieth century.

After leaving high school Edna studied art at several different institutions including St. Martin's School of Art in London.

She also studied privately with Maurice Harding, the animal sculptor, going on to continue her art studies at the Regent Street Polytechnic as well as the St. Martin's School of Art in London.

During this time, she had intentions of becoming a zoologist.

In the early 1920s and 1930s she experimented with modernism eventually adapting it to her own aesthetic.

Edna Manley was an early supporter of art education in Jamaica.

In 1921, she married her cousin, Norman Manley.

The two met when Norman came to England for university, Edna was only 14 at the time and Norman was eight (8) years her senior.

They fell out of touch but later reunited after Norman finished school and while Edna was working at a pension office studying art on the side.

The two had a controversial union, due to not only family ties but the obvious deepness of Norman's complexion.

They went on to have two children, Michael Manley (a later prime minister) and Douglas Manley, a sociologist and minister in his brother's government, moving to Jamaica in 1922 after Douglas's birth.

Edna quickly realized how different the Jamaican middle class was in comparison to the life she knew in England and kept journals of her thoughts, observations, and experiences.

The political standings of her husband and children would prove influential to her art as well as impact her life and career in a way she may have never expected.

Manley was involved politically, not only through the association of her sons and husband, but also through the subject matter she addressed in her work, such as sexuality, culture and feminism.

Manley's feminism influences were arguably due to her a first-wave feminist sister, Lena, who fought alongside the suffragettes for the right to vote for females.

Though this did not manifest itself in the same way as her sister, she paved a way of her own unique to Jamaica.

She did not fight outright for new wave feminism, but her excellence, notoriety and dominance in the predominantly male world of visual arts, fought in their way.

Thoughts around socialism also preoccupied Edna's mind following the years after her marriage.

As her sons and husband became more a part of the Jamaican political sphere, forming the People's National Party (PNP), Edna also became more preoccupied with Fabian Socialism ideology and avidly supported the party and its socialist democratic ideals.

In the 1940s, she organised and taught art classes at the Junior Centre of the Institute of Jamaica.

These classes developed in a more formal setting with the establishment of the Jamaica School of Art and Craft in 1950.

Politics was a large and unavoidable part of her life and would go on to be further highlighted in her works dome in the 1960s and 1970s when Jamaica was dealing with great civil and political unrest.

Norman Manley, her husband, died in 1969 leaving her in ruin.

She shared that 'after Norman died, the thing that saved me was my art.' In 1975 she decided to delve more into painting, giving up sculpting, due to her age and strain it placed on her body.

She maintained her own identity and did not live in the shadow of her famous husband.

Edna Manley died on 2 February 1987; a few weeks short of her 87th birthday.

She was an amazing woman in the eyes of many; a woman who carved her path independent of the name of her husband or son and continues to influence and inspire many artists to this day.

Early Artistic Life

During this period of Edna's life, she faced frustration at the lack of Exhibitions in Jamaica, as well as the attitudes the people had towards art.

Jamaica's first Art School would eventually expand into a college and was renamed Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in 1995 to honour the artist's pioneering role in Jamaican Art.

Edna Manley was also the wife of Norman Manley, the founder of the Jamaican People's National Party and the 1st Premier of Jamaica.

She is often considered the "mother of Jamaican art".