Abstract Composition (Portrait of Lee Miller)

Details

Sir Roland Penrose (1900-1984)
Abstract Composition (Portrait of Lee Miller)
signed and dated 'Penrose 46' (lower right) and dedicated 'for Nousche/&/Dick/with/love/from Lee/&/Roland' (on the reverse)
oil on panel
30¼ x 20¼ in. (76.8 x 51.4 cm.)

Provenance

Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 30 March 1982, lot 190.

Literature

Exhibition catalogue, The Surrealist Spirit in Britain, London, Whitford & Hughes, 1988, p. 83, illustrated.

Exhibited

Paris, Galerie 1900-2000, Les Enfants d'Alice: La Peinture Surrealiste en Angleterre 1930-1960, May - June 1982, no. 112.
Canterbury, Hebert Read Gallery, Surrealism in England, 1936 and after, May 1986, no. 91.
Cardiff, National Museum of Wales, 1986, catalogue not traced.
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Laing Art Gallery, 1986, catalogue not traced.
London, Whitford and Hughes, The Surrealist Spirit in Britain, April - June 1988, no. 37.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Lot Essay

This work was painted at the end of 1946 upon Lee Miller and Roland Penrose's return from the United States, where they had visited Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning in Arizona. Despite the title, this is not an abstract composition, but a conscious play on abstract and surrealist elements. Indeed, the upper part of Lee's body is a fluid, organic vision in gold (her hair) and blue (a light, aerial colour) indicative of a kind of elusiveness while the lower part is more solid, firm, earthly. This tension between the two parts of the composition, between the geometric and the organic, is central to Roland Penrose's aesthetics, and links up, more personally, with Lee Miller's own duality, her wish to stop moving and stay here and her compulsion to travel and move away. She would soon choose the former, with the birth of their son, Antony, the following year.

M.R.

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