JEAN COCTEAU (1889-1963) Portrait of Mary Butts.

JEAN COCTEAU (1889-1963)
Portrait of Mary Butts. Pencil on paper mounted on board. 263x203 mm; 10¼x8 inches. Unsigned on recto but gifted by Cocteau to Glenway Wescott, with Wescott's description and address written in ink on verso. Circa 1928.Provenance: Chevalier Tony Clark Collection.Butts, a bisexual English writer, met Cocteau in Paris in the 1920s. The artist would create a similar line drawing portrait of her as the frontispiece for her memoir The Crystal Cabinet, 1937. Butts led a varied and interesting life; she was a disciple of, and co-author to, the occultist Aleister Crowley and was married to the modernist poet John Rodker, with whom she had a daughter. Through Rodker, she befriended and supported the publications of the group of writers which included Ezra Pound, May Sinclair, Roger Fry, Wyndham Lewis, and Ford Madox Ford.

Pencil on paper mounted on board. 263x203 mm; 10¼x8 inches. Unsigned on recto but gifted by Cocteau to Glenway Wescott, with Wescott's description and address written in ink on verso. Circa 1928.Provenance: Chevalier Tony Clark Collection.Butts, a bisexual English writer, met Cocteau in Paris in the 1920s. The artist would create a similar line drawing portrait of her as the frontispiece for her memoir The Crystal Cabinet, 1937. Butts led a varied and interesting life; she was a disciple of, and co-author to, the occultist Aleister Crowley and was married to the modernist poet John Rodker, with whom she had a daughter. Through Rodker, she befriended and supported the publications of the group of writers which included Ezra Pound, May Sinclair, Roger Fry, Wyndham Lewis, and Ford Madox Ford.