Edward Wadsworth: Lewis’s ‘salty’ obituary of an ‘old comrade’
By Jan Cox
It was J. R. (Joe) Ackerley, the literary editor of The Listener, who asked Wyndham Lewis to write the magazine’s obituary of Edward Wadsworth. Upon receiving Lewis’s article, Ackerley wrote to him praising the obituary: ‘to read your salty remarks was most refreshing’ . Ackerley added more enigmatically that Lewis was probably ‘reflecting on what you might have said if freedom really existed’ (Ackerley 1949). Ackerley’s choice of Lewis is straightforward, in that Lewis had known Wadsworth well in the period from 1913 to 1924. But it is thought-provoking also, in that their contact after the mid-1920s was sporadic and marred by ill-feeling. Let us perform therefore a close analysis of Lewis’s words to see whether his intentions are as straightforward or as thought-provoking as was the choice of obituarist. Has Lewis forgiven his ‘old comrade’ and recalled the battles they fought together in the vanguard of British modernism, or is his view still coloured by artistic or personal differences? We need to examine whether there are hidden nuances in his carefully chosen phrases and emphases, and examine why certain topics are omitted or hardly touched upon.
From an artistic point of view, the most significant collaboration between Lewis and Wadsworth was in the first number of the magazine Blast (1914), in which Wadsworth presented four paintings (reproduced in black and white), and the woodcut Newcastle. Curiously, although Lewis mentions Wadsworth’s Vorticist period in the obituary, he doesn’t discuss Wadsworth’s art production of this era, though he praised Wadsworth’s Blackpool (1914-15) when it was shown at the London Group exhibition in March 1915 (Michel 85).
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Shelled (detail), 1919 |
During the First World War, Lewis served in the army in France, whilst Wadsworth spent time in the Mediterranean with the Royal Naval Reserve, and then supervised the camouflage of naval vessels that became known as ‘dazzle ships’. In 1919, Lewis enshrined the comradeship of the two men in his famous work A Battery Shelled, now in the Imperial War Museum. Wadsworth is held to be the model for at least one of the soldiers in the left foreground (Edwards 209).
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Beacon Hill, 1923 |
Lewis relates how he took a car journey with Wadsworth to ‘the hill above Halifax’. This is likely to have been to Beacon Hill in the Delage - a prestigious French-built marque — that Wadsworth purchased in 1921. Wadsworth’s daughter Barbara contends that her father actually said ‘It’s beautiful! It’s just like hell!’ as they observed the glowing chimneys of Halifax at dusk (Wadsworth 89).
Wadsworth’s spontaneous reaction of boyish enthusiasm contrasts with Lewis’s more reflective remark: ‘To forestall correspondence, it did not seem to me like hell. But perhaps I am more particular’. It needs to be remembered that Lewis had witnessed the full horror of war on the Western Front only a few years before this incident, so was perhaps reproachful at Wadsworth’s idea of hell. Lewis does not say why he believes the Black Country scenes to be Wadsworth’s finest work, but he appears to relish their industrial nature, which recalls the description of England as an ‘industrial island machine’ in Blast.
Lewis emphasises Wadsworth’s affection for the mechanical and the nautical. The mechanical side is illustrated by the fact that Wadsworth used to visit the factory of Sigmund Gestetner — the duplicator manufacturer in Tottenham, North London — where he ‘liked to pick up bits of metal, the curious shapes of which stimulated his invention’ (Wadsworth 63). This fascination with mechanical instruments manifested itself in Wadsworth’s work around 1930; this was much influenced by Léger, two of whose pictures he had purchased in 1929. Barbara Wadsworth relates how her father would sometimes place his own work alongside one of the Légers for a few days before deciding whether alterations were needed (Wadsworth 187). Serge Fauchereau remarks on a shared philosophy between the two artists in the 1930s; Léger wrote that
The origins of the new realism are to be found in modern life itself, in its constant phenomena, in the influence of geometric manufactured objects, in a transposition in which the imagination and the real mingle and merge, but from which all literary or descriptive sentimentality, and all sensationalism, have been banished. (Fauchereau 114)
The issue of the maritime theme is a more contentious one. As far back as 1914, Ezra Pound had noted Wadsworth’s ‘delight in mechanical beauty’ and ‘a delight in the beauty of ships’: the latter enthusiasm had been with Wadsworth since childhood. However, Lewis did not share Wadsworth’s passion for nautical subject matter. In his Listener article, Lewis says of Wadsworth that ‘the nautical, rather oddly, disputed with the mechanical for first place in his mind’ and that he had been ‘deflected [...] into nautical channels’. Lewis satirised Wadsworth (and his wife Fanny) by means of a number of marine analogies in his 1930 novel The Apes of God, in which a thinly-disguised Wadsworth is described as ‘a rich mountebank marine-painter’ (Lewis 1965, 190). For example:
Jenny and Richard fell astern — Jenny rolling squably but rakishly in the wake of the departing full-rigged ship, Richard heaving to at her side. They both put their helms hard to port. (Lewis 1965, 195-6)
In this Listener obituary, Lewis displays his ability to pick out somebody’s salient characteristics and build an exaggerated but credible persona that fits his own purpose. Thus Wadsworth’s naval service (predominantly land-based), propensity to tan quickly, and fondness for a risqué story become ‘a rolling gait, a becoming tan and an unrivalled collection of salty limericks’. The success of this strategy can be seen in Jeffrey Meyers’ derivative description of Wadsworth as possessing ‘a nautical gait, a handsome tan and a fine repertoire of salty limericks’ (Meyers 112).
No evidence exists to support Lewis’s notion of Wadsworth’s ‘studio at a south coast port’ where he consorted with ‘other old salts’, either in authoritative books like Jonathan Black and Barbara Wadsworth, or in picture titles. Wadsworth did visit Plymouth and Portland during a walk from Newlyn to London in 1920, and he returned to Plymouth at the end of 1922 to make sketches from which a number of pictures emerged (e.g. The Cattewater, Plymouth Sound). Far from utilising a studio to be near the nautical community, Wadsworth stayed at The Grand Hotel in Plymouth (Black 174).
In earlier writings, Lewis described the positive qualities of the sea. In 1914, Blast had ‘blessed’ half-a-dozen British ports, before declaring that ‘the English character is based on the sea’ (Lewis 1914, 33). Lewis reiterated this during the Second World War, declaring: ‘The Anglo-Saxon is the representative of the sea, or rather the ocean; the fascist stands for the land’ (Lewis 1941, 150). A possible clue to Lewis’s antipathy towards Wadsworth’s subject matter is provided by Barbara Wadsworth, who writes that ‘Lewis never forgave Edward the love of ships expressed in his work of the early twenties’ (Wadsworth 189). My interpretation of her words is that it was not the actual motif of ships, but the type of ship, that dismayed Lewis. The small sailing boats, large-masted schooners, and intricate rigging were a return to the pre-industrial past, and symbolize an about-face for Wadsworth after nearly a decade of modernist production. In the article that follows this one (‘Edward Wadsworth: The modern and the maritime’) I discuss a possible reason for Wadsworth’s rejection of a modernist agenda. His adoption of a Seurat-style pointillism, just prior to the Second World War, would also have been anathema to Lewis, who described the latter’s work as ‘empty pretexts for the trying out of optical notions’ (Lewis 1948b, 944).
In his article, Lewis mentions the termination of his connection with Wadsworth ‘immediately after World War I’. This may have been true artistically, but there was considerable personal contact between the two following the Group X show of 1920, much of it not in the spirit of comradeship. Wadsworth became very wealthy upon the death of his father at the beginning of 1921, enabling him to buy Lewis’s Praxitella (1920-21; MP30) in May of that year for the not inconsiderable sum of £200. The following year, Wadsworth’s guarantee on Lewis’s £100 overdraft was called in. Lewis’s ever-present financial predicament — an inability to turn artistic or literary merit into monetary success was a life-long problem — led in December 1923 to a stipend of £16 a month, financed by Wadsworth, Wadsworth’s wife Fanny, Richard Wyndham, and others. With hindsight, this sum was pitched at a figure that satisfied no-one. Lewis no doubt thought that the wealthy contributors could afford more than a couple of pounds each per month, but wasn’t in a position to refuse the offer. The contributors thought that they were being benevolent and that Lewis should be very grateful. The precise mechanics of the fund’s distribution soon rankled with Lewis and the scheme foundered in an atmosphere of mistrust and acrimony.
In 1925 a painter, not named by Lewis, approached him to contribute to an exhibition of works by Wadsworth, Nash and others, but Lewis declined. In a letter to Ezra Pound he expressed his disgust on finding later that the show featured ‘a large coloured drawing of mine which Wadsworth had sold to the Gallery, or put into Sothebys, where it could conveniently be bought’ (June 11 1925; Rose 159).
As mentioned earlier, Lewis found an outlet for his displeasure in his 1930 novel The Apes of God. In this work he satirised the Wadsworths, Richard Wyndham, and the Sitwells. Edward and Fanny were portrayed as Richard and Jenny, ‘their class-war-profiteered factory wealth but lately inherited’ (Lewis 1965, 190). Lewis used a variety of nautical metaphors to portray the ‘mountebank painter’ and his ‘obese and smiling’ ‘awful old bore of a wife’: Edward is an ‘old sea-salt’, Fanny a ‘tubby dinghy’ (Lewis 1965, 189-94). Richard Wyndham (‘Dick Whittingdon’) was a particular target for caricature. He reacted by offering for sale two of Lewis’s paintings in The Times personal column. In order to show his disdain, Wyndham advertised them by size rather than description: ‘9ft. by 7ft. and 6ft. by 4ft.’ (The Times 17 June 1930, 1). Interestingly, he gives his address as 77 Bedford Gardens, surely the model for the block of studios mentioned in The Apes of God, where ‘Dick Whittingdon’ rented all ten studios thereby preventing ‘ten geniuses from having a roof over their genius [...] while he sat [...] in solitary egotistic state’ (Lewis 1965, 199). As if in answer to Lewis’s fictional protest, these studios were occupied by many artists in the 1940s, among them Jankel Adler, Robert Colquhoun, Robert MacBryde, John Minton, and Ronald Searle. Deciding against litigation, a group of the ‘Apes’, including the Wadsworths and Wyndham, sent a postcard to Lewis showing an infant modified to parody Lewisian characteristics, and bearing the caption ‘GREETINGS TO TARZAN FROM A GATHERING OF THE APES’ (O’Keeffe 293). In a curious twist, Richard Wyndham’s grandfather was named Percy Wyndham (Lewis’s Christian names). However, it seems more likely that Lewis was named after the Captain Percy Wyndham who, like Lewis’s father, fought for the Union side in the American Civil War (Edwards and Edwards 1995, 1).
Further interaction between Lewis and Wadsworth occurred when Lewis held an exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in December 1937, his first major show for sixteen years. Stephen Spender organised a letter to The Times, drafted by Geoffrey Grigson, appealing for a national collection to purchase one of Lewis’s works. One of the twenty signatories to the letter was Edward Wadsworth (O’Keeffe 376-77). The day after the letter appeared, Wadsworth, in a spirit of reconciliation, wrote to Lewis directly saying that he was ‘very enthusiastic about your present show [...] I found it most exhilarating’ (Wadsworth 249). Within a month however, the problem of money was again causing a rift between them: ‘The most I can do is send you a cheque for £10 [...] More I cannot manage’ (Wadsworth 249-50). Later, in 1940, Wadsworth discussed with Richard Eurich the anaemic nature of works produced by official war artists (Wadsworth was barred from their ranks by reason of his German son-in-law). With unintentional irony Wadsworth opined: ‘The one artist who would have produced “unpleasant” paintings has been left out — I mean Wyndham Lewis’ (Wadsworth 277). Lewis, now resident in North America, was eventually paid to produce a picture for the War Artists Advisory Committee. A Canadian War Factory (1943) is now in Tate Britain but it wasn’t delivered until 1946!
In the obituary, Lewis is keen to stress the financial advantages that Wadsworth enjoyed; an education at Fettes, a wealthy family background, rentier status and a large inheritance from his father. Lewis was naturally thoughtful about the way in which lack of finance had proved a constant worry and hindrance throughout his own career: only a week before the publication of this obituary, the Board of Trustees of the Tate Gallery had turned down his latest Portrait of T.S. Eliot, offered for the sum of £250. It was later purchased by Magdalene College, Cambridge.
It could be argued that in stressing Wadsworth’s ‘rentier background’, Lewis is criticising his fellow artist. For example, CRW Nevinson (shown with Wadsworth below) attacks Roger Fry in his autobiography: ‘we were professional artists without cocoa behind us [...] he was a Socialist with no desire to be taken for the rentier that he was’ (Nevinson 123).
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(Left to right: John Currie, Mark Gertler, C.R.W. Nevinson, Edward Wadsworth, Adrian Allinson, Mme. Tisceron) © Image reproduced with permission of The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery |
Additional annoyance was certainly caused by Wadsworth’s ‘eventual absorption by the Royal Academy’. Lewis’s vehement dislike of the art acceptable to the Royal Academy was publicly known, following the row that erupted after the Academy’s rejection of his earlier Portrait of T. S. Eliot in 1938. Lewis subsequently grasped every opportunity to belittle the artistic taste of the institution. In fact, Wadsworth had been very anti-Royal Academy too, and as late as May 1938 he described it as a ‘sodden mass of Privilege’ (Wadsworth 251). But despite the strong opposition of his wife and daughter, he decided to accept an Associateship. Even as he did so, in May 1943, Wadsworth wrote to Richard Eurich of ‘the deplorable standard of painting [...] in the current show’ (Wadsworth 319). I believe that a sense of financial insecurity — Wadsworth inherited £120,936 from his father in 1921, but left only £17,406 when he died in 1949 — and his status as an ‘outsider’ in exile in the Peak District during the war, led him to grasp at this official recognition. His hopes that the Academy might provide a platform for sales of his work were to prove misplaced; only one picture, Anticyclone, was sold there. (Wadsworth 303).
Lewis suggests that it was membership of the Royal Academy in 1943 that led to a brightening of Wadsworth’s colours, and the resemblance of his subsequent work to ‘lurid geometric flower[s]’. However, Wadsworth explained in a letter to Maxwell Armfield in August 1942 that he was using ‘strong local colour’ in order to avoid the ‘easy romance evoked by artistic greys and pale tints’. His aim at that time, he declared, was ‘an intensification of colour’, exemplified by Michelangelo’s Entombment (c. 1500-1; National Gallery, London). He continued: ‘I shall go through a period [...] using strong local colour — even harsh colour’ (5 August 1942; TGA 7029). This may have been Wadsworth’s reaction to the dull uniformity of wartime Britain: Evelyn Waugh later described the national dress at that time as ‘the livery of air-raid shelter’. Additionally, Wadsworth was frustrated by the landscape of Derbyshire, which he told Armfield was ‘lovely to look at, but not to paint’, and complained that the climate was ‘grim’ (18 June 1942; TGA7029).
A further area that deserves consideration is Lewis’s declaration that Wadsworth was ‘a genius of industrial England’. This phrase has been used by Jonathan Black as positive proof of Lewis’s high opinion of Wadsworth: ‘Lewis bestowed upon him the epitaph of the “genius of industrial England”’. The same phrase was appropriated as the title for the important Wadsworth retrospective at Bradford in 1989-90. However, what Lewis actually says is that Wadsworth’s genius is comparable to that of ‘a genius of agricultural England’ known as ‘Old Crome’.
John Crome (1768-1821), referred to as Old Crome to distinguish him from his artist son, was an English landscape painter and founder of The Norwich School, a group of artists that included John Sell Cotman. He seems an unusual choice of artist for comparative purposes, and is otherwise unmentioned in Lewis’s writings on art. If Lewis had wished to make comparisons with a visionary of the English countryside, two names occur far more readily. John Constable (1776-1837) was a far better-known artist than Crome, and is credited with helping to introduce the qualities of English landscape painting to French artists, most notably Delacroix. If Constable was in any way out of favour at this time, an artist at the peak of his popularity was Samuel Palmer (1805-1881). Geoffrey Grigson had written Samuel Palmer: The Visionary Years in 1947, reflecting the high esteem and influence of Palmer amongst contemporary artists such as Graham Sutherland, John Minton, and John Craxton. In The Listener even the non-Romantic Lewis had been impressed by Palmer’s ‘marvellous ordering of nature’ (Lewis 1948a, 672); three weeks prior to his Wadsworth article, Lewis had advised that ‘the visitor must not fail to note [...] Samuel Palmer’s two scenes, dyed deep in the dark juices of romance’ (Lewis 1949a, 988).
A contemporary indication of Crome’s standing is provided by ‘E.K.W.’ in The Burlington Magazine in November 1946, discussing Crome’s Coast Scene near Cromer that was then on display at Arthur Tooth & Sons. He described the work as ‘a picture in the grand manner and may well be thought by those who are more interested in art than Norwich to be one of Crome’s greatest pictures’. This suggests surely that Crome was, at this time, thought of in terms of the Norwich school, rather than as a major British artist. Paul Nash had complained ruefully in The Listener in 1933 of people’s liking for ‘modern Constables and Cromes’ (Causey 276); this is a wry comment on the conservatism of the British picture-buying public. In order to establish a positive reason for Lewis’s use of Crome, I can only suggest that Lewis was thinking of the solidity of Crome’s composition, as distinct from his standing in the British art world. Conversely, Lewis may be trying to suggest a degree of parochialism in Wadsworth’s works akin to his love of the maritime.
Finally, we need to consider Lewis’s descriptions of Wadsworth himself. He was a ‘notable’ artist, with a ‘quite secure’ place in twentieth-century English art; furthermore, he was an ‘important artist’ who would have ‘been better understood by [...] the logical French mind’. Can we conclude that Lewis is being scrupulously accurate in his precise choice of descriptive phrases, or do we detect an element of ‘damning with faint praise’ in this unsentimental and dispassionate appreciation of a recently deceased ‘old comrade’?
Bibliography
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________. 1990. ‘Wadsworth and the Woodcut’ in Jeremy Lewison (ed.) A Genius of Industrial England: Edward Wadsworth 1889-1949, exh. cat. Bradford: Cartwright Hall.
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Edwards, Paul. 2000. Wyndham Lewis: Painter and Writer. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
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Mellor, David. 1978. ‘London-Berlin-London: a cultural history — The reception and influence of the New German Photography in Britain 1927-33’ in David Mellor (ed.) Germany: The New Photography 1927-33. London: Arts Council of Great Britain.
Meyers, Jeffrey. 1980. The Enemy: A Biography of Wyndham Lewis. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Michel, Walter & C. J. Fox (eds.). 1969. Wyndham Lewis on Art: Collected Writings 1913-1956. London: Thames and Hudson.
Nevinson, C. R. W. 1938. Paint and Prejudice. London: Harcourt, Brace.
O’Keeffe, Paul. 2000. Some Sort of Genius: A Life of Wyndham Lewis. London: Jonathan Cape.
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Piper, John. 1933. ‘Recent Paintings of Edward Wadsworth’ Apollo, December, 386-7.
‘R. S. S.’ 1920. ‘Art and Industrialism’ New Statesman, 9 October, 17-18.
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TATE GALLERY ARCHIVE
Edward Wadsworth’s Press Cuttings Album. Ref: TGA 8112/3
- Sunday Times 30 November 1919
- Sunday Times 11 January 1920
- The Morning Post 13 January 1920
- Daily Express 15 January 1920
- The Observer 18 January 1920
- Times Literary Supplement 30 September 1920
- Rutter, Frank. The Sunday Times 7 November 1926
- Apollo December 1926
- Vogue Early December 1926
- Algemeen Hendelsblad 2 June 1927
[Version 1.00: July 2009]