Cover design for Enemy No. 3

Details

Percy Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957)
Cover design for Enemy No. 3
signed with initials 'WL.' (lower right), signed again and inscribed 'Cover Design/for ENEMY. No. 2.[sic]/Wyndham Lewis' (on the reverse)
ink, on two sheets
8 ¼ x 5 in. (21 x 12.5 cm.)
Executed circa 1927-29.

Provenance

with Leicester Galleries, London.
Hugh Kenner, and by descent.

Literature

W. Lewis (ed.), The Enemy No. 3, illustrated on the cover.
W. Lewis, Rude Assignment, illustrated opp. p. 224.
Exhibition catalogue, Wyndham Lewis and Vorticism, London, Tate Gallery, 1956, no. 89, illustrated on the cover.
W. Michel, Wyndham Lewis Paintings and Drawings, London, 1971, p. 390, no. 633, pl. 88.

Exhibited

London, Leicester Galleries, Paintings and Drawings by Wyndham Lewis, December 1937, no. 27.
London, Tate Gallery, Wyndham Lewis and Vorticism, July - August 1956, no. 89.

Special notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent. These lots have been imported from outside the EU for sale using a Temporary Import regime. Import VAT is payable (at 5%) on the Hammer price. VAT is also payable (at 20%) on the buyer’s Premium on a VAT inclusive basis. When a buyer of such a lot has registered an EU address but wishes to export the lot or complete the import into another EU country, he must advise Christie's immediately after the auction.

Brought to you by

Louise Simpson

lsimpson@christies.com +44 (0)20 7389 2681

Lot Essay

The Enemy, the third magazine that Wyndham Lewis edited (the first was BLAST, the magazine of the Vorticists), ran from 1927 to 1929, and was largely written by Lewis himself. In it he declared himself the enemy of all that was fashionable and pseudo-revolutionary in contemporary culture. He produced several semi-figurative, semi-abstract ink drawings to illustrate his literary work during this period, and this strutting figure made one of his most striking and successful cover designs. For the cover of The Enemy No. 3 the present work is reproduced twice in a perspectival pairing.

The former owner, Hugh Kenner, wrote of these ink-drawings, 'They are all perfectly distinct from one another: one indolent, one vain, one slack, one vapid, one aggressively sexual though sexually equivocal. . . . Their suggestions of costume are normally oriental, rich, ornate, bewildering, stylish, mindless' (H. Kenner, ‘The Visual World of Wyndham Lewis’, in W. Michel, op. cit., pp. 30–31).

We are very grateful to Professor Paul Edwards for preparing this catalogue entry.

More from Modern British & Irish Art Day Sale

View All