Francis Newton Souza (1924 - 2002)

Acquired directly from the artist by Mr. Sidney Farleigh, the father of the present owner

Thence by descent

Mr. Farleigh's first introduction to the artist was in London in the late 1950s - early 1960s, where he frequently visited Souza's home and studio in Belsize Park

There are minor accretions present on the surface of the painting. The canvas has a few dents and undulations and would benefit from re-stretching. There are minor spots of foxing, particularly visible around the edges of the work. The polyvinyl acetate has worn off in a few small areas around the edges. This work is in good overall condition, as viewed.
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During 1961, Souza produced a number of canvases where he used polyvinyl acetate over oil and chalk pastel. This technique blurred the lines and highlighted the texture of the canvas giving the works a shroud-like quality that demonstrated the artist's interest in early religious portraiture. This work is probably a portrait of St. Sebastian, identified by the inclusion of the arrows. 'As a child I was fascinated by the grandeur of the Church and by the stories of tortured saints my grandmother used to tell me.' (E. Mullins, Souza, 1962, p.55). St Sebastian was a subject Souza chose to depict throughout his career as it allowed Souza to explore the theme of religious suffering that was so central to his work. Souza's portraits of the saint often bore a striking resemblance to the artist, the arrow wounds represented Souza's pockmarked skin following a bout of smallpox as a child. 

Throughout the 1960s, Souza’s depiction of heads became tirelessly experimental. He devoted sketchbooks dedicated to the same head. Some heads were heavily swollen with features condensed, while others are covered in eyes and teeth replicated in order to create unnerving distortions. 'Like Picasso he is restlessly inventive, and the subtltey of his art is at times masked by the sheer vigour of his brushwork. Like Picasso, too, his inventions have tended to be thought outrageous, because the imagination that created them was discovering something about the visual world which no one as yet understood, or which everyone has forgotten.' (ibid.,p.40)

'If he was creating monsters, no one would probably be troubled; but because his images are clearly intended to be human, one is compelled to ask why his faces have eyes high up in the forehead, or else scattered in profusion all over the face; why he paints mouths that stretch like hair combs across the face, and limbs that branch out like thistles. Souza's imagery is not a surrealist vision - a self-conscious aesthetic shock - so much as a spontaneous re-creation of the world as he has seen it, distilled in the mind by a host of private experiences and associations.' (ibid., p.39)