Percy Wyndham Lewis

Percy Wyndham Lewis

1882 - 1957

Robe

embroidered and block-printed silk robe

height: 132cm.; 52in.

Executed circa 1913-14.

Acquired from a Private Collector, 2002

London, Textile and Fashion Museum, Artist Textiles, 1940 - 1976, May 2012

Geoffrey Rayner, Richard Chamberlain, Annamarie Stapleton, Artists' Textiles 1940 - 1976, Antique Collectors' Club Ltd, Woodbridge, 2012

Jo Lawson-Tancred, ‘Fashion Designer Kim Jones Curates a Show of Bloomsbury Group Treasures’, Artnet News, 7 October 2024, illustrated 

Percy Wyndham Lewis had a short-lived but influential relationship the Bloomsbury group and the Omega workshop, where this hand-blocked printed and embroidered silk robe was most likely designed and created in 1913-14. During his involvement with the workshop, he had created a letterhead for the organisation, candle shade designs, folded screen and several painted ceramics. His textiles such as this robe were a much more recent discovery, with the art historian Richard Cork stating: ‘... the elongated, crouching figure and fox motif reappear in a silk robe by Lewis from 1914, and clearly belong to a distinct repertoire of figures that he developed at the time.’

Wyndham-Lewis studied at the Slade School in London, before spending several years travelling and living in Europe, often with Augustus John, where he picked up romantic elements of traditional painting before committing to Cubism and Futurism. In 1912, his work was included in Fry’s second Post-Impressionist exhibition in London.

After a short while, Lewis founded his own workshop in early 1914, the Rebel Art Centre, which aligned with his more Vorticist and Italian Futurist tastes. This venture ended with the declaration of the First World War, and it has been mainly textiles that have been discovered from the workshop since, such as this silk robe, which was illustrated and discussed for the first time in ‘Artists’ Textiles – 1940-1976’ and then displayed in the internationally touring ‘Artist’s Textiles – Picasso to Warhol’ show at the Fashion & Textile Museum in London.