Beneath Wyndham Lewis's Praxitella – the Rediscovery of a Lost Vorticist

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Beneath Wyndham Lewis's Praxitella – the Rediscovery of a Lost Vorticist Beneath Wyndham Lewis’s Praxitella – The Rediscovery of a lost Vorticist work by Helen Saunders Painting Pairs Project 2020 By Rebecca Chipkin and Helen Kohn Beneath Wyndham Lewis’s Praxitella Rebecca Chipkin and Helen Kohn Introduction The Painting Pairs project enables postgraduate conservation students and art history students at the Courtauld Institute of Art to conduct a technical and art historical analysis of an artwork together. The following paper presents the research findings for the painting Praxitella, c. 1921 by Wyndham Lewis from Leeds Art Gallery. The research was undertaken by Rebecca Chipkin and Helen Kohn from November 2019 until May 2020. Acknowledgements First of all, we would like to thank Leeds Art Gallery for giving us the opportunity to study one of the masterpieces of their collection. In particular, we thank Nigel Walsh. This project would not have been possible without the help of our tutors, scholars, and friends, who gave us new insights, helped us to ask the right questions and see things from new angles. We thank: Silvia Amato, Pippa Balch, Dr Leon Betsworth, Prof Aviva Burnstock, Paul Edwards, Dr Pia Gottschaller, Dr Paul O’Keeffe, Brigid Peppin, Prof David Peters Corbett, Clare Richardson, Dr Karen Serres, and Dr Barnaby Wright. 1 Beneath Wyndham Lewis’s Praxitella Rebecca Chipkin and Helen Kohn Table of Contents A glance at the surface: Praxitella by Wyndham Lewis ........................................................... 3 A look beneath Praxitella: Atlantic City by Helen Saunders .................................................... 8 Painting over Atlantic City: A work by Saunders or Lewis? ................................................... 13 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 15 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................ 16 Appendix I: Key Stage Images ............................................................................................... 18 Appendix II: Detail Images ...................................................................................................... 22 Appendix III: Diagrams .......................................................................................................... 26 Appendix IV: Reference Images ............................................................................................. 28 Appendix V: Paint Cross-sections .......................................................................................... 37 2 Beneath Wyndham Lewis’s Praxitella Rebecca Chipkin and Helen Kohn A glance at the surface: Praxitella by Wyndham Lewis The painting Praxitella by Wyndham Lewis was first shown at the Tyros and Portraits exhibition at Leicester Galleries in London in April 1921. This was Wyndham Lewis’s most important exhibition after World War I, in which he publicly presented, through his paintings, his ideas about post-war contemporary British art.1 Lewis always wanted to innovate British contemporary art. He had achieved recognition as one of the founding members of the Vorticist avant-garde art movement in 1914 that aimed to express his time and generation with abstract machine-like forms.2 Most of the forty-five artworks shown at Tyros and Portraits were works on paper. Only seven works were oil paintings, as Lewis worked mainly on paper and not on canvas.3 Compared to the smaller works on paper Praxitella, with its large dimensions of 142.2 x 101.6 cm, stood out. But it is not only a remarkable painting because of its size. At the centre of the painting sits a monumental machine-like figure on a large, curved, brown armchair. The figure – a woman – looks pensively downwards. Her eyes are not fully visible, and her yellow-reddish pupils, red lips and chin stand out in contrast with the blue metallic colour of her flesh. The paint layer of the bright background contains small lumps that emphasise Praxitella’s shimmering appearance. Her face is painted with distinctive lines that emphasise her forehead and cheeks. She wears a flowing blue-green dress with three striking rust-brown, parallel bands near the hem. The zig-zagging abstract forms of her left arm seem like an homage by Lewis to his pre-war Vorticist phase. Praxitella’s distinctive brown hair in a tight bun and her dress identify her as Iris Barry.4 Barry was Lewis’s lover and muse between 1918 and 1922.5 She was a young and intelligent woman who later became one of the most prominent film critics of her time. She was also the founder of the film library at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, where she curated small 1 David Peters Corbett, ed., Wyndham Lewis and the Art of Modern War (Cambridge, England ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 99.; Paul Edwards, Wyndham Lewis: Painter and Writer (New Haven ; London: Yale University Press, 2000), 253. 2 John Rothenstein and Wyndham Lewis, eds., Wyndham Lewis and Vorticism: A Tate Gallery Exhibition Circulated by the Arts Council (London: Tate Britain and Arts Council of Great Britain, 1956), 3. Lewis writes that he aims to find “a visual language as abstract as music”; Richard Cork, Vorticism and Abstract Art in the First Machine Age: Origins and Development, vol. 1 (University of California Press, 1976), 94. 3 Paul Edwards and Richard Humphreys, Wyndham Lewis Portraits (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2008), 12. 4 Paul Edwards, ‘Girl Reading – Wyndham Lewis and Iris Barry. Talk given by Paul Edwards to the Leeds Art Fund to Mark the Purchase of the Drawing, 2016.’ (Leeds, 2016), 19.; Robert Sitton, Lady in the Dark: Iris Barry and the Art of Film (Columbia University Press, 2014), 73. 5 Sitton, Lady in the Dark, 73 Footnote 25. 3 Beneath Wyndham Lewis’s Praxitella Rebecca Chipkin and Helen Kohn film exhibitions.6 Like Lewis, she is described as having had a sarcastic humour and sharp personality.7 The palette is dominated by blues, greens and purples, punctuated by areas of yellow and red that vibrate against the darker colours (app. I, plate 1). The figure is thickly painted with defined edges that stand out against the pale green background, which is made of a mixture of emerald green and a high proportion of lead white. Small grainy matter, possibly sand, has been mixed into the background paint to provide an uneven texture (app. V, fig. 1). The dark blue dress is made of a mixture probably containing viridian or emerald green and possibly Prussian blue that was applied in several layers to model subtle differences in hue.8 Examination of a paint cross-section taken from Praxitella’s proper right shoulder and examined under UV shows particles that fluoresce bright yellow, which suggests the presence of zinc white, which was added to make Praxitella’s dress lighter (app. V, figs. 3, 4). Praxitella’s bright red lips are painted using vermilion (presumably the modern, synthetic version of the pigment). The chrome-based yellow paint at the border of Praxitella’s dress, which peaks out from underneath the dark blue and which is also present in the glimmering yellow at the hem and border of the proper left sleeve, gives Praxitella an ominous quality. In some areas of the hem, chrome yellow was mixed with an iron oxide pigment, most likely umber, and in others it was applied over the top of the umber (app II, fig. 1).9 In several areas, there are at least three layers of yellow in varying shades, some of which are mixed with vermilion and red lake pigments to produce warmer and darker tonalities. These additions result in an orange colour. The smooth gradations that give a metal-like reflective quality to Praxitella were achieved by applying the paint wet-in-wet. At the contour of the chest, for example, yellow and light blue paints used for the highlight are carefully blended into the darker blue of the dress using straight brushstrokes so the colours mix together on the surface of the painting (app. II, fig 2). In addition to this blending technique, Lewis achieved complex colours through the use of transparent layers. This can be seen in the proper right cheek of Praxitella where the blue shadow on her cheek was painted over already dry pink paint. This gives the effect of warm, 6 Jeffrey Meyers, The Enemy: A Biography of Wyndham Lewis (Boston [Mass.]; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), 93. 7 Meyers, 89. 8 Elements copper and arsenic were detected using XRF, which could suggest emerald green. Chromium was detected in the same area, which could suggest viridian. XRF penetrates through multiple layers, which means one or more of the elements could belong to a different layer. 9 A peak for manganese appears in XRF, together with a peak for iron this can indicate umber pigment. 4 Beneath Wyndham Lewis’s Praxitella Rebecca Chipkin and Helen Kohn glowing skin (app. II, fig. 3) – a strange contrast to the sharp lines and metallic quality of the rest of the figure. This same technique is used for the area of the floor where a mixture of lead white, red lake and possibly ultramarine was used to create a light purple, which was brushed onto a beige-grey background containing lead white, iron oxides and a small amount of chrome yellow. This technique gives what would be an otherwise blank space a textural and lively quality (app. II, fig 4). Lewis also made compositional changes in the final stages of the painting process. For example, Praxitella’s hair was originally painted after the background layers had dried (app II, figs.
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