Percy Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957)

Red portrait

Details

Percy Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957)
Red portrait
signed and dated 'Wyndham Lewis 1937' (lower right)
oil on canvas
36 x 24 in. (91.4 x 61 cm.)

Provenance

Charles Handley-Read, Bryanston School, Blandford, Dorset; Mrs. Eva Handley-Read.
Anon. sale; Sotheby's London, 22 November 1972, lot 85 (£4,600).
W.D. and H.O. Wills, by 1980.
with Crane Kalman, London, October 1989.

Literature

C. Handley-Read (ed.), The Art of Wyndham Lewis, London, 1951, pp. 30, 45, 72-3, 98, pl.41.
W. Michel, Wyndham Lewis Paintings and Drawings, London, 1971, P76, pp. 129-30, 342, pl. XIV, and illustrated on the dust-jacket.

Exhibited

London, Redfern Gallery, Wyndham Lewis, May 1949, no. 124, dated to 1936.
London, Tate Gallery, Wyndham Lewis and Vorticism, July-August 1956, no. 138.
London, Zwemmer Gallery, Wyndham Lewis, Paintings and Drawings, May 1957, no. 14.
Manchester, City Art Gallery, Wyndham Lewis, October-November 1980, no. 134, p. 114 (illustrated): this exhibition travelled to Cardiff, National Museum of Wales, November 1980-January 1981; and Edinburgh, City Art Centre, January-March 1981.

Lot Essay

A portrait of the artist's wife, Froanna, whom he married in 1929. Another portrait from the same year, Froanna - Portrait of the Artist's Wife, (Glasgow Museum and Art Gallery) is also painted almost exclusively in the red-brown tones that gives the present work its title. Walter Michel (op. cit., p. 129) comments that 'Red Portrait is the superb culmination of the tendency we have noted in the drawings. The monochrome colour, which extends to the moon (!) landscape in the background, the sitter's formality, air of remoteness and declamatory way of holding the cigarette, constitute a climax which, surprisingly, may be called mannerist'.

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