Description
PERCY WYNDHAM LEWIS (1882-1957)
PORTRAIT OF NAOMI MITCHISON ALSO CALLED THE TRAGIC MUSE
Signed, pencil and wash,
45.5cm(18in) x 35.5cm(14in)
Footnote
Exhibited:Manchester City Art Gallery, Wyndham Lewis, 1980, no.125
National Museum of Wales, 1980/81
City Art Centre, Edinburgh, 1981
Literature:Walter Michel, Wyndham Lewis: Paintings and Drawings,1971,no. 952
Naomi Mitchison,You may well ask, 1979, p.146. In this the most recent volume of her autobiography, Naomi Mitchison said of Lewis, " I spent a lot of time and energy trying to persuade him that his quarrels were imaginary, that people didn't really hate him or try to supress him. We used to argue about all this while he did a whole series of drawings of me. This was was in the full Enemy period, the spring and late autumn of 1931. In most of these drawings I am wearing a very formal rose brocade dress which I had bought secondhand in Sarajevo. It had a very low neckline and loose silk-lined sleeves cut away in an odd scallop at the shoulder. He was never tired of the shape of that rather stiff dress, held together at the waist with a big golden brooch; but sometimes in the drawings my hair is close to my head in coils over my ears, and sometimes it is in long corn-colourede plaits. I chose for myself one of the most stylised versions, in which he used me in my dress to suggest something else; he called it The Tragic Muse, and it is one of his finest drawings."
Note:This drawing dates from c.1931.
Provenance: Lady Naomi Mitchison