EDWARD WADSWORTH, A.R.A. (1889-1949) Still Life with Chrysanthemums in...
EDWARD WADSWORTH, A.R.A. (1889-1949) Still Life with Chrysanthemums in a Vase signed Wadsworth. (lower right) oil on canvas 81.8 x 70.6 cm (32 x 28 1/4 in) Painted in 1912 Provenance: Jimmy Wormser, from whom acquired by the present owner Private collection, France Literature: J.Black, Edward Wadsworth: form, feeling and calculation : the complete paintings and drawings, London, 2005, p. 14, no. 25, illustrated Still life played an important role in Wadsworth’s output and was a genre he preferred in key periods throughout his career: 1926-1929, 1934-38; 1941-44. His still lifes of the 1920s prompted press on the Continent to describe him as an English Surrealist. He was the first British artist to earn this label and it was one he strongly disputed. Still life was also a genre that carried a very personal meaning for him. Having died days after his birth, the artist’s mother, Helen, herself a talented amateur artist, left Wadsworth with a small painting of a still life which he is known to have kept and moved with him throughout his life. Painted in 1912 Still Life with Chrysanthemums in a Vase is one of the first known paintings of the genre by the artist and is one of very few he painted real flowers in. The only other comparable piece completed by the artist is Still life with fruit and a bottle in the Government Art Collection. The bright Fauvist palette, the flattened perspective and the Cézanesque contour to the orange all show a great dept to the Post-Impressionist style favoured by Roger Fry and the Bloomsbury Group at the time. Wadsworth was still at the Slade when Roger Fry’s ground-breaking first Post-Impressionist exhibition took place in London in 1910. Although Professor Henry Tonks did his best to keep his students from the influence of these latest trends, by his last year Wadsworth had already developed links with the adventurous Bloomsbury-backed exhibition group, the Friday Club, which displayed work by, amongst others, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and C.R.W. Nevinson. It is also no surprise that 1912 was also the year Wadsworth visited Paris for the first time to explore the exciting trends there, clearly carrying through that influence into his own work. Still Life with Chrysanthemums in a Vase may hold an even greater personal importance to the artist as it has been suggested that he painted it for his wife, violinist Fanny Mary Eveleigh, whom he married when he was still at the Slade in June 1912. By 1912 Wadsworth was already gaining the respect of his fellow students and other influential figures in the art world in London. In September 1912, Christopher Nevinson wrote to fellow painter Dora Carrington (another ex-Slade student) that he judged Wadsworth’s most recent canvases to be ‘bloody good’ while he admired their ‘healthy strength and vigour and modern feeling and independence’. It is exactly these qualities that Wadsworth cherished the most in his art throughout his career, he believed that ‘a composition should have strength and vigorous immediacy that quickly secured the attention of the viewer.’ Still Life with Chrysanthemums in a Vase holds a special place in the artist’s career, marking the beginning of his ambitious output. Wadsworth participated in a number of key cultural events: in 1913-14 he helped to found the London Group, as a forum for the exhibition of stylistically challenging art; in 1914 he helped to found the Vorticist movement with Wyndham Lewis. Throughout his career he was not labouring under one particular influence and managed to cleverly carve a niche of his own, reserving a significant place for himself in British Art during the first half of the twentieth century and it is no wonder that committed contemporary modernists as Henry Moore, Paul Nash, John Piper, Ben Nicholson, Max Ernst, Joseph Fernand Henri Léger, László Moholy-Nagy, Willi Baumeister, Gino Severini, Ossip Zadkeine, Auguste Herbin and Alexander Calder and leading critics sympathetic to modernism such as Herbert Read, Léonce Rosenberg, Reginald Howard Wilenski, Eric Newton and Waldemar George held him in high regard. Artist's Resale Right may apply on this lot
Sold for £15,000
Includes Buyer's Premium
Sale price
Time, Location
Auction House
EDWARD WADSWORTH, A.R.A. (1889-1949) Still Life with Chrysanthemums in a Vase signed Wadsworth. (lower right) oil on canvas 81.8 x 70.6 cm (32 x 28 1/4 in) Painted in 1912 Provenance: Jimmy Wormser, from whom acquired by the present owner Private collection, France Literature: J.Black, Edward Wadsworth: form, feeling and calculation : the complete paintings and drawings, London, 2005, p. 14, no. 25, illustrated Still life played an important role in Wadsworth’s output and was a genre he preferred in key periods throughout his career: 1926-1929, 1934-38; 1941-44. His still lifes of the 1920s prompted press on the Continent to describe him as an English Surrealist. He was the first British artist to earn this label and it was one he strongly disputed. Still life was also a genre that carried a very personal meaning for him. Having died days after his birth, the artist’s mother, Helen, herself a talented amateur artist, left Wadsworth with a small painting of a still life which he is known to have kept and moved with him throughout his life. Painted in 1912 Still Life with Chrysanthemums in a Vase is one of the first known paintings of the genre by the artist and is one of very few he painted real flowers in. The only other comparable piece completed by the artist is Still life with fruit and a bottle in the Government Art Collection. The bright Fauvist palette, the flattened perspective and the Cézanesque contour to the orange all show a great dept to the Post-Impressionist style favoured by Roger Fry and the Bloomsbury Group at the time. Wadsworth was still at the Slade when Roger Fry’s ground-breaking first Post-Impressionist exhibition took place in London in 1910. Although Professor Henry Tonks did his best to keep his students from the influence of these latest trends, by his last year Wadsworth had already developed links with the adventurous Bloomsbury-backed exhibition group, the Friday Club, which displayed work by, amongst others, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and C.R.W. Nevinson. It is also no surprise that 1912 was also the year Wadsworth visited Paris for the first time to explore the exciting trends there, clearly carrying through that influence into his own work. Still Life with Chrysanthemums in a Vase may hold an even greater personal importance to the artist as it has been suggested that he painted it for his wife, violinist Fanny Mary Eveleigh, whom he married when he was still at the Slade in June 1912. By 1912 Wadsworth was already gaining the respect of his fellow students and other influential figures in the art world in London. In September 1912, Christopher Nevinson wrote to fellow painter Dora Carrington (another ex-Slade student) that he judged Wadsworth’s most recent canvases to be ‘bloody good’ while he admired their ‘healthy strength and vigour and modern feeling and independence’. It is exactly these qualities that Wadsworth cherished the most in his art throughout his career, he believed that ‘a composition should have strength and vigorous immediacy that quickly secured the attention of the viewer.’ Still Life with Chrysanthemums in a Vase holds a special place in the artist’s career, marking the beginning of his ambitious output. Wadsworth participated in a number of key cultural events: in 1913-14 he helped to found the London Group, as a forum for the exhibition of stylistically challenging art; in 1914 he helped to found the Vorticist movement with Wyndham Lewis. Throughout his career he was not labouring under one particular influence and managed to cleverly carve a niche of his own, reserving a significant place for himself in British Art during the first half of the twentieth century and it is no wonder that committed contemporary modernists as Henry Moore, Paul Nash, John Piper, Ben Nicholson, Max Ernst, Joseph Fernand Henri Léger, László Moholy-Nagy, Willi Baumeister, Gino Severini, Ossip Zadkeine, Auguste Herbin and Alexander Calder and leading critics sympathetic to modernism such as Herbert Read, Léonce Rosenberg, Reginald Howard Wilenski, Eric Newton and Waldemar George held him in high regard. Artist's Resale Right may apply on this lot
Sold for £15,000
Includes Buyer's Premium
Sale price
Time, Location
Auction House
