Percy Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957)

In 1936, Lewis wrote to his dealers, 'To hell with these experimental 'difficult' contraptions ... I will do no more for six months, or until I am solvent. I will really do dreams of beauty, which will sell themselves, as I am bringing them down to the Gallery'. Indeed, the present work was purchased by the writer, Naomi Mitchison, who commissioned her portrait from the artist later that year. She recorded (loc. cit) that on buying the painting she told Lewis of her feeling that the hand poised above the stream should be holding something that the dreaming figure had taken from the water. Lewis obligingly added the folded, transparent, bubble-like shape in the nubian's hand before the picture was delivered to her (see W. Michel, op. cit., p. 342).