Georges Banks

Anne Lavinia Cameron Banks, also known as Dot Banks and by the male pseudonym Georges Banks, was a Scottish writer and artist affiliated with avant-garde circles such as the Rhythm Group at the start of the 20th century.

Biography

Banks was born in Edinburgh, the daughter of solicitor George Cameron Banks and Sophie Frances Rutherford Gowan. She never married. She died, aged 61, of congestive heart failure at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.

Work

For the 1912 publication How Pearl Button Was Kidnapped by the New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield, Banks created a caricature of the writer, alongside sketches by her friend Henri Gaudier-Breszka, Othon Friesz and J.D. Fergusson.
According to curator Alicia Foster, Banks and fellow Rhythm artist Jessica Dismorr shared a fascination for modern dance and performance and they both worked as foreign correspondents for a French theatre magazine. Banks wrote the first review for the Ballets Russes in Rhythm, writing about the production Petrouchka composed by Igor Stravinsky. In September 1912, she reviewed the production Salomé featuring the acclaimed dancer Ida Rubinstein.

Legacy

In 1912–13, sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska created a caricature of Banks, which still exists in Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge.
Following her death in 1953, her friend J.D. Fergusson recalled her life:
The actor Esme Percy also eulogised her: