The Dancer

The Dancer, probably painted in the early 1970s, is one of a series of monumental paintings of skeletal figures in the landscape made by William Crozier between 1961 and 1975. It is, however, unusual in this body of work in that the subject was inspired by a literary source, Herman Hesse’s 1927 novel, Steppenwolf, itself a counter-cultural classic in the 1960s.

Steppenwolf is the name the artist used when referring to The Dancer and is the title he chose when the painting was first exhibited. Crozier described many of his figure paintings as self-portraits and it is not difficult to see parallels between the tormented protagonist of Hesse’s novel, Harry Haller, and the crises within the artist’s life at that time. In the narrative of the novel, Haller is rescued from his despair by learning to dance and to embrace the positive in life. Crozier wrote that he wanted his human figures and the landscape to be indivisible, in the sense that someone who is in a state of stress or isolation sees the world as a projection of themselves. While The Dancer amply illustrates this intention, the energy of the dancing figure and the gaiety of the colour palette echo the triumphant, redemptive message of Hesse’s novel.

We are very grateful to Katharine Crouan for her assistance with cataloguing this lot.