Ezra Pound

Details

Percy Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957)
Ezra Pound
black crayon on buff paper
14¼ x 10 5/8 in. (36.2 x 27 cm.)
Executed in 1920.

Provenance

with Anthony d'Offay, London, where purchased by the present owner at the 1983 exhibition.

Literature

P.W. Lewis, Blasting and Bombardiering, London, 1937, illustrated.
W. Michel, Wyndham Lewis: Paintings and Drawings, London, 1971, no. 412, pl. 45 (reproduction of a signed photograph).
Exhibition catalogue, Wyndham Lewis Drawings and Watercolours 1910-1920, London, Anthony d'Offay, 1983, no. 40, illustrated.
P. Edwards, Wyndham Lewis Painter and Writer, New Haven and London, 2000, p. 245, illustrated.

Exhibited

London, Leicester Galleries, Tyros and Portraits, April 1921, no. 14.
London, Anthony d'Offay, Wyndham Lewis Drawings and Watercolours 1910-1920, April - May 1983, no. 40.

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium.

Lot Essay

'Pound was a particularly good subject for Lewis because his personal flamboyance and energy exactly matched the qualities of Lewis's drawing. The 1920 head [the present work], for example, constructs the image from Lewis's usual repertoire of arcs, linked in a chain of phrasing and counter-rhythms signed off by the whiplash lines at the bottom of the sheet. The character of the sitter is seen mainly in the wide collar and loose tie, transformed from the rather sloppy accoutrements of real life into expressions of tense, latent energy. The blank eye sockets, by contrast, give the face itself a kind of placidity that enhances the impersonality of the energy expressed in the drawing; it is a force of nature, the drawing implies' (see P. Edwards, loc. cit).

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