Edna Manley

A Distinguished Jamaican Artist

Edna Manley was an Jamaican artist and social activist. Born in 1900, Her father, Harvey
Swithenbank, was an English and her mother a Jamaican. She studied sculpture in London
at the Regent Street Polytechnic, the Royal Academy Schools and St. Martin's School of Art.
She married her cousin Norman Manley and moved to Jamaica in 1922.
Two children, both sons, were born to that marriage,
Michael who was to become a union activist and
eventually prime minister, and Douglas, a sociologist and minister in his brother's
government.
Her work here in the 1920s and early 1930s strongly reflected the current Vorticist and Neoclassical trends in British sculpture. The influence of Frank Dobson and Jacob Epstein is
particularly marked. Her subject-matter, however, revealed a strong identification with
Jamaica and our people.

When her husband became leader of the People's National Party, in the wake of the worker
uprising of 1938, she became a public figure both as an artist committed to producing works
centred on Jamaica (most notably the figure 'Negro Aroused') and as a promoter of
Jamaican literary culture through the journal Focus, which she edited in the 1940s and
1950s.
Active for much of her life as an artist, she also taught at the Jamaica School of Art (now a
component of the Edna Manley College of Visual and Performing Arts). She died in 1987
When her husband became leader of the People's National Party, in the wake of the worker
uprising of 1938, she became a public figure both as an artist committed to producing works
centred on Jamaica (most notably the figure 'Negro Aroused') and as a promoter of
Jamaican literary culture through the journal Focus, which she edited in the 1940s and
1950s.
Active for much of her life as an artist, she also taught at the Jamaica School of Art (now a
component of the Edna Manley College of Visual and Performing Arts). She died in 1987.
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Some of her popular works include:

Whisper

Into The Mist

Before Thought

Moon

Into The Sun

Growth

The Ancestor

The Mother

Negro Aroused

Diggers

Man and Woman

Bead Sellers

The Trees are Joyful

Rainbow Serpent

Rising Sun

Prophet

Ghetto Mother
She has received numerous awards including, the Gold Musgrave Medal of the Institute of
Jamaica (1943), The Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of the West
Indies (1977) and the Order of Merit (Jamaica, 1980)