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Lot Essay
Barbara Wadsworth (op. cit, p. 325) records how the long friendship between David Enders and Edward and Fanny Wadsworth began in 1944:
'Barbara's husband had been lucky enough to be offered a job on the Chatsworth Estate which had been passed by the Ministry of Labour, and he spent his weekends in the forests there, living with the estate's wall-keeper and his wife at Edensor, and coming up to Buxton at weekends. A new friend was added to the Talland set, David Enders, an attractive young man who had been invalided out of the Welsh Guards and sent to Buxton for treatment against rheumatism. He was an Oxford graduate (under Maurice Bowra at Wadham), determined to become an actor, and with his intelligence, initiative and good looks it was not long before he was engaged to the Buxton Repertory Company as juvenile lead. One of his first appearances was in J.M. Barrie's Mary Rose, to which Fanny and Edward were invited by the Hills. The production creaked, the name part was poorly played and it was by no means an exciting theatrical evening; but Enders made a deep impression on Fanny, and she came home full of how excellent he was - and how charming. Next day, as she was browsing around Buxton's largest antiques shop, there was Enders doing just the same thing, and they got into conversation. She asked him to tea the same week, and he passed muster with Edward within the first half hour, by correctly identifying Picasso's fishes'.
Commenting on the artist's series of still-life paintings from the 1927-31 period, Barbara Wadsworth (op. cit., p. 153) explains: 'In 1927, however, and in the following three years, he concentrated on still-life dramatically employing the Triton, the bear's paw clam and other shells that had made their debut at the Leicester Galleries the previous year. In these paintings Edward depicted many of the 'props' he had collected and stored in his studio: cork floats, binoculars, navigational measuring instruments such as the ship's log or sextant, lanterns and fishermen's tackle. These were often supplemented by objects altogether unrelated to seagoing, such as scarves or paper table-napkins (to provide suppleness in an otherwise hard and linear work), the plaster mask found in his garden, a wedding-cake flower decoration, books, a long branch from a monkey-puzzle tree, a cigarette lighter, perfume sprayer or a plover's egg. These things were to him all vital to the tautness and visual interest of his pictures. It was his appreciation of their form which made him pay homage to them in his work'.
We are very grateful to Mrs. Barbara von Bethmann-Hollweg for her assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
'Barbara's husband had been lucky enough to be offered a job on the Chatsworth Estate which had been passed by the Ministry of Labour, and he spent his weekends in the forests there, living with the estate's wall-keeper and his wife at Edensor, and coming up to Buxton at weekends. A new friend was added to the Talland set, David Enders, an attractive young man who had been invalided out of the Welsh Guards and sent to Buxton for treatment against rheumatism. He was an Oxford graduate (under Maurice Bowra at Wadham), determined to become an actor, and with his intelligence, initiative and good looks it was not long before he was engaged to the Buxton Repertory Company as juvenile lead. One of his first appearances was in J.M. Barrie's Mary Rose, to which Fanny and Edward were invited by the Hills. The production creaked, the name part was poorly played and it was by no means an exciting theatrical evening; but Enders made a deep impression on Fanny, and she came home full of how excellent he was - and how charming. Next day, as she was browsing around Buxton's largest antiques shop, there was Enders doing just the same thing, and they got into conversation. She asked him to tea the same week, and he passed muster with Edward within the first half hour, by correctly identifying Picasso's fishes'.
Commenting on the artist's series of still-life paintings from the 1927-31 period, Barbara Wadsworth (op. cit., p. 153) explains: 'In 1927, however, and in the following three years, he concentrated on still-life dramatically employing the Triton, the bear's paw clam and other shells that had made their debut at the Leicester Galleries the previous year. In these paintings Edward depicted many of the 'props' he had collected and stored in his studio: cork floats, binoculars, navigational measuring instruments such as the ship's log or sextant, lanterns and fishermen's tackle. These were often supplemented by objects altogether unrelated to seagoing, such as scarves or paper table-napkins (to provide suppleness in an otherwise hard and linear work), the plaster mask found in his garden, a wedding-cake flower decoration, books, a long branch from a monkey-puzzle tree, a cigarette lighter, perfume sprayer or a plover's egg. These things were to him all vital to the tautness and visual interest of his pictures. It was his appreciation of their form which made him pay homage to them in his work'.
We are very grateful to Mrs. Barbara von Bethmann-Hollweg for her assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.