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拍品專文
Across the Modern British and Irish Art Evening and Day sales, Christie’s are delighted to be offering a group of works by Edward Wadsworth, which are being sold directly from the artist’s family. This group demonstrates Wadsworth’s skill and diversity, and is led by his striking early Self Portrait in a Turban of 1911 (please see lot 14 in the Evening sale), painted the year he won First prize for Figure Painting at the Slade School of Art. In the Day sale, works from all decades of his career are represented: from the earliest work of 1912, a rare oil painting depicting Gran Canaria where he and his wife Fanny spent their honeymoon; to a 1944 tempera painting Straight from the Tap I, which came about as part of a war-time commission from the ICI in which a stylised female figure occupies her domestic environment. These works have remained in the artist’s family since they were painted, and not only do they confirm Wadsworth’s position within the avant-garde of the time, but they also document the more private life of the artist and his family.
For works from this collection please see lot 14 in the Modern British and Irish Art Evening sale on 18 October, and lots 103-108 in the Modern British and Irish Art Day sale on 19 October.
During the Second World War, the ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries) commissioned Wadsworth to produce a body of work relating to the very latest industrial materials. Whilst the commission was predominantly important to him as a means to earn much needed cash, it also gave him access to sketch inside the new ICI factory at Blackley, South Manchester, built by his friend Serge Chermayeff in 1938. He also found it invigorating to have the opportunity to sketch in the open air, in particular because at this time he was not otherwise permitted to work outdoors. This can be seen in the resulting works, such as Limestone, 1942 (Pallant House Gallery, Chichester), which shows the ICI's limestone quarries at Hindlow, and Top of the World, 1942-43 (Ferens Art Gallery, Hull), in which he paints the approach road to Beswick's Lime works in the Peak District.
As part of the commission, Wadsworth painted Straight from the Tap I, a painting of a 'young housewife filling the kettle for an undoubtedly nerve-steadying cup of tea as the war ground on' (J. Black, Edward Wadsworth, Form Feeling and Calculation: The Complete Paintings and Drawings, London, 2005, p. 124). The distinctive female figure, who is echoed in the figures seen in Number Please!, 1942 (sold at Christie's, London, on 22 March 2023, lot 134, for £100,800), was 'more akin to the goddesses, nereids and dryads in the frescoes by Gozzoli and Botticelli which he had seen in Florence in the Medici Palace and the Uffizi respectively in May 1923. Intriguingly, a great deal of the work Wadsworth produced for ICI anticipated, in its direct almost brash immediacy and accessibility, the Pop Art of Lichtenstein, as Jeremy Lewison has argued' (J. Black, Edward Wadsworth, Form Feeling and Calculation: The Complete Paintings and Drawings, London, 2005, pp. 124, 127).
For works from this collection please see lot 14 in the Modern British and Irish Art Evening sale on 18 October, and lots 103-108 in the Modern British and Irish Art Day sale on 19 October.
During the Second World War, the ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries) commissioned Wadsworth to produce a body of work relating to the very latest industrial materials. Whilst the commission was predominantly important to him as a means to earn much needed cash, it also gave him access to sketch inside the new ICI factory at Blackley, South Manchester, built by his friend Serge Chermayeff in 1938. He also found it invigorating to have the opportunity to sketch in the open air, in particular because at this time he was not otherwise permitted to work outdoors. This can be seen in the resulting works, such as Limestone, 1942 (Pallant House Gallery, Chichester), which shows the ICI's limestone quarries at Hindlow, and Top of the World, 1942-43 (Ferens Art Gallery, Hull), in which he paints the approach road to Beswick's Lime works in the Peak District.
As part of the commission, Wadsworth painted Straight from the Tap I, a painting of a 'young housewife filling the kettle for an undoubtedly nerve-steadying cup of tea as the war ground on' (J. Black, Edward Wadsworth, Form Feeling and Calculation: The Complete Paintings and Drawings, London, 2005, p. 124). The distinctive female figure, who is echoed in the figures seen in Number Please!, 1942 (sold at Christie's, London, on 22 March 2023, lot 134, for £100,800), was 'more akin to the goddesses, nereids and dryads in the frescoes by Gozzoli and Botticelli which he had seen in Florence in the Medici Palace and the Uffizi respectively in May 1923. Intriguingly, a great deal of the work Wadsworth produced for ICI anticipated, in its direct almost brash immediacy and accessibility, the Pop Art of Lichtenstein, as Jeremy Lewison has argued' (J. Black, Edward Wadsworth, Form Feeling and Calculation: The Complete Paintings and Drawings, London, 2005, pp. 124, 127).