Edward Wadsworth, A.R.A.

Mayor Gallery, London, 1935
Rowley Gallery, London, by 1947
Piccadilly Gallery, London

London, Mayor Gallery, Edward Wadsworth Exhibition, November 1933, no.5;
Brussels, Universal International Exhibition, British Exhibit of Modern Art, 1935, no.781 (as Composition on a Blue Background);
United States, Exhibition of British Art, 1944 (organised by the National Gallery, London) (as Composition on a Blue Background), details untraced;
Cairo, International Art Exhibition, 1947 (Arts Council tour);
London, Mayor Gallery, Unit One: Spirit of the 30s, May – June 1984, no.41, illustrated in the catalogue.

Barbara Wadsworth, Edward Wadsworth: A Painter’s Life, Michael Russell Ltd., Salisbury 1989, no. W/A155;
Jonathan Black, Edward Wadsworth: Form, Feeling and Calculation, Philip Wilson Publishers, London 2005, no.311, pp. 93 & 188, illustrated.

Viewed from the reverse, there are signs of old woodworm at the right edge of the board and in the lower left corner. However, these appear to have been successfully treated and are not in any way apparent from the recto side. Occasional minute losses to the tempera (of pin-head proportions) are visible in the white and grey pigment in the lower right quadrant. There may also be a small area of slight fragility, centre left, in the lower undulation of the left hand pink form. Otherwise the paint surface appears to be in good sound condition overall. Inspection under UV light reveals a 1 by 5cm horizontal strip of retouching centre left in the area mentioned above. Several other tiny spots and dashes of scattered retouching are also visible, with a further 1cm diameter spot near the upper right corner. Attractively presented behind glass in a simple white painted wood frame with distressed finish. Ready for the wall.
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As we have seen with Composition on a Pink Ground, Cones and Spirals (lot 35), Wadsworth’s painting from 1929 onwards was showing increasing levels of abstraction. Whilst works such as Composition on a Pink Ground, Cones and Spirals still retain vestiges of the original forms from which they are derived, by the end of 1932 he had embarked on the Dux et Comes series of paintings which show a remarkable level of anthropomorphic abstraction. Whilst the fluid forms can be seen to link with those that appear in contemporary works by Arp, Leger and Miro (all of whom Wadsworth admired), in this group, it is possible that the subtitles for each work, such as Meeting, Rebuff, Pursuit and Exhalation, reveal something more by apparently tracking the course and breakdown of Wadworth’s affair with Kathleen Dillon (see note to lot 35). The group title Dux et Comes is itself a musical term, meaning leader and follower, and this further reinforces the idea that the forms retain a human quality. Indeed, their resemblance to human forms may suggest that Wadsworth was also drawing inspiration from Henry Moore whose contemporary stylised figures with their smooth curves were certainly known to him and who was a great friend of the Wadsworths . Indeed Fanny Wadsworth had purchased Figure 1932 (LH127) from Moore’s Leicester Galleries exhibition of that year.

In Composition on a Blue Ground I, the rounded forms of the Dux et Comes paintings have become thinner and more attenuated and they appear wilfully inverted and placed on sharp white spiky shapes above a confused and random line. If the earlier paintings in the series can be taken to be influenced by the events of Wadsworth’s private life, then we must by now be seeing the emotional devastation that came at the end of the episode. 

Composition on a Blue Ground I was included in Wadsworth’s one-man exhibition at the Mayor Gallery in November 1933 along with the Dux et Comes paintings to which it relates, and although critical reviews were mixed, perhaps because the nature of his work had changed so radically, this human element in his abstraction was recognised. Edward Crankshaw saw that ‘the abstract painter works from the outside inwards, but Mr Wadsworth is working from the inside outwards… he is a romantic concerned with the registration of his own personal feelings’ (Edward Crankshaw, Weekend Review, 23^rd November 1933).  Composition on a Blue Ground I was one of the paintings highlighted by Crankshaw as the finest examples in the exhibition.