It’s a Cover-up!
Leeds Art Gallery, till 5 November
I caught up with an exhibition that escaped me in London while on an art’n’lunch jolly to Leeds. All I knew before seeing it was that it was about a painting by Wyndham Lewis, whose work I like, even though he held some rather suspect political views at one time.
It turned out that ‘Things Left Unsaid: Percy Wyndham Lewis, Iris Barry, Helen Saunders and the Story of Praxitella’ was an exhibition with a theme dear to damesnet ’s heart: the obliteration of women’s art – in this case literally.
Praxitella, one of the most striking examples of Modernist portraiture is also a veil comprehensively drawn (or in this case painted) over a rare example of a Vorticist painting by a woman. The exhibition explores the creation of this work through analysis of the canvas and examines the wider cultural context in which the artists in question were working. It’s a ‘deep dive’ approach that is intensely satisfying.
The remarkable detective work is down to two students at the Courtauld Institute, Rebecca Chipkin and Helen Kohn, who paired up on an interdisciplinary project to explore a painting from a historical and a technical angle. They chose Praxitella, a portrait of Iris Barry (Wyndham Lewis’s partner from 1918 to 1921). Which has been in the collection of Leeds Art Gallery since 1945.
But raised lines on the painting that did not form part of the composition suggested that there was another painting underneath. X-ray photography revealed that this was a painting entitled Atlantic City,* by Wyndham Lewis’s one-time close friend and co-signatory of the Vorticist manifesto, Helen Saunders. The painting could be identified because it had been reproduced in black and white in the short-lived Vorticist magazine BLAST.
Samples taken from the edge of the painting showed that Saunders had used a wide range of pigments in Atlantic City, a ‘brightly coloured, richly painted and visually striking work’, but when the researchers tried to analyse other areas of the canvas they found that the painting had been covered over in a thick layer of white paint before the canvas was reused. They have posed the question as to whether Wyndham Lewis was the culprit, but there is no conclusive evidence that it was him. Still, it is tempting to think he did. Very tempting… especially as he had terminated his close friendship with Helen Saunders abruptly, leaving her distraught.
Helen Saunders and Iris Barry had long careers independently, and part of this exhibition aims to introduce us to their work away from the orbit of Wyndham Lewis.
Helen Saunders continued to paint until her death in 1963, moving away from Vorticism towards realism. Iris Barry became a respected film critic, and the first curator of the film department at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
Both women wrote poetry (Barry initially under the tutelage of Ezra Pound) and moving excerpts from their work, much of it Imagist in style, are on display.
‘Things Left Unsaid’ is a wholly satisfying exhibition: concise enough to focus on intently, full of striking images, and replete with fascinating personal and cultural details that make a visit a rich learning experience too.
It’s on till 5 November – and the elegant Tiled Hall Café comes highly recommended too!
*Atlantic City/The Guardian
Comment * What a fascinating article thanks for bringing the painting and it’s history to light. What a rotten thing to do…. paint over someone else’s work
By all accounts WL was a bit of a rotter, but at least he bought Iris Barry the fabulous frock she is wearing!
An interesting and informative article. An exhibition worth seeing.
Thanks – I love stumbling across something like this!