.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
‘A group of beautiful and original still-life studies in matt, earthy colours was a new departure for Philpot. Their breadth, solemnity, and sensitiveness of handling achieve just the quality of feeling after which he had sought’ (A.C. Sewter (intro.), G. Philpot 1884-1937, London, 1951, p. 8).
Philpot was well travelled, visiting France, Spain and Italy in the early 1900s, drawn by the Renaissance works of Titian and Velázquez, whose literary, religious and symbolic character appealed to the artist. This can be seen in Still-life with Mandolin, 1934, with the inclusion of a mandolin and a series of bound leather books in the background. Painted during his most prolific period of the 1930s, Still-life with Mandolin stands as one of the most striking still-lifes of his career. During this time Philpot began to move away from the Edwardian Romantic aesthetic that pre-occupied his early work to a more Modernist style. As seen in the present work there was now a greater emphasis on the harmonisation of colour and tone, which, paired with a renewed interest in surface and line, along with a looser brushstroke, imbued a heightened expressiveness of character. This change in direction was described by Philpot, in an article he wrote for Apollo in 1933, in which he stated, ‘The change has been towards a simplification of technique, a sacrifice of ‘expected’ qualities of surface in order to obtain more rapidity and flexibility of handling and a greater force of accent. With this has gone a simplification of form, dispensing with exactitudes of drawing to obtain greater emotional weight in line. Add to this a disregard for logical chiaroscuro, when this was found to hamper the sharper detachment of one plane to another, and this is all. All these are technical changes, and all have been adopted instinctively in the search for new forms of beauty’ (ibid., pp. 7-8).
Sewter reiterated that Philpot's final years, from 1933 until his death in 1937, were a period of tremendous creativity, with the artist producing many of his masterpieces in these years. He stated that these works were of astonishing variety, with the artist mastering his new technique: ‘These pictures revealed his consummate mastery of technique, his command of an unusual beauty of surface and colour, and his instinctive grasp of expressive pose and composition … Their rich and sonorous tonality, their strong, unusual, and subtly harmonized colour schemes, pointed clearly to the arrival of a master’ (ibid., p. 3).
Philpot was well travelled, visiting France, Spain and Italy in the early 1900s, drawn by the Renaissance works of Titian and Velázquez, whose literary, religious and symbolic character appealed to the artist. This can be seen in Still-life with Mandolin, 1934, with the inclusion of a mandolin and a series of bound leather books in the background. Painted during his most prolific period of the 1930s, Still-life with Mandolin stands as one of the most striking still-lifes of his career. During this time Philpot began to move away from the Edwardian Romantic aesthetic that pre-occupied his early work to a more Modernist style. As seen in the present work there was now a greater emphasis on the harmonisation of colour and tone, which, paired with a renewed interest in surface and line, along with a looser brushstroke, imbued a heightened expressiveness of character. This change in direction was described by Philpot, in an article he wrote for Apollo in 1933, in which he stated, ‘The change has been towards a simplification of technique, a sacrifice of ‘expected’ qualities of surface in order to obtain more rapidity and flexibility of handling and a greater force of accent. With this has gone a simplification of form, dispensing with exactitudes of drawing to obtain greater emotional weight in line. Add to this a disregard for logical chiaroscuro, when this was found to hamper the sharper detachment of one plane to another, and this is all. All these are technical changes, and all have been adopted instinctively in the search for new forms of beauty’ (ibid., pp. 7-8).
Sewter reiterated that Philpot's final years, from 1933 until his death in 1937, were a period of tremendous creativity, with the artist producing many of his masterpieces in these years. He stated that these works were of astonishing variety, with the artist mastering his new technique: ‘These pictures revealed his consummate mastery of technique, his command of an unusual beauty of surface and colour, and his instinctive grasp of expressive pose and composition … Their rich and sonorous tonality, their strong, unusual, and subtly harmonized colour schemes, pointed clearly to the arrival of a master’ (ibid., p. 3).