Frederick Etchells

Private Collection

London, Tate, The Vorticists: Manifesto for a Modern World, 14th June - 4th September 2011 (ex. cat.).

The sheet is not laid down but appears to be adhered to the mount in a few places about the edges. The sheet undulates and there are three repaired tears to the edges. One to the centre of the upper edge which measures 2cm, one in the bottom right corner measuring 2.5cm, and a further tear to the centre of the left edge measuring 2cm. There is a further faint diagonal line in the lower left corner, which may either be a repair or a crease. There is a vertical line of discoloration running along the right edge, presumably from an old mount, and further minor discoloration to the upper and lower edges. There are one or two extremely minor stains but otherwise the paint surface is in good overall condition. Held under glass in a stained wooden frame with a cream mount; unexamined out of frame. An additional paper conservator's report is available upon request. Please telephone the department on 020 7293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Frederick Etchells was at the heart of the London avant-garde before the First World War, and was a central figure in the transmission of new ideas about painting from Paris to London.  After studying at the Royal College of Art, he rented a studio in Paris, where he met Picasso, Braque and Modigliani.  At the same time he maintained a London base, teaching part-time at the Central School.  He became acquainted with Roger Fry, Duncan Grant and Vanessa and Clive Bell.  Vanessa Bell's 1912 depiction of Etchells and his sister at Bell's house near Lewes, Asheham, Frederick and Jessie Etchells Painting, is in Tate Britain. Etchells collaborated with Duncan Grant on murals for the Borough Polytechnic (contributing Hampstead Heath).  Etchells' painting The Dead Mole (Provost and Fellows of King's College, Cambridge) was exhibited at the 'Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition' in 1912. He also exhibited elsewhere with Bloomsbury painters, and his style at this time showed knowledge of pointillism and Fauvism, tentatively applied.  He was very much part of the Bloomsbury group of painters, as was confirmed by his membership of the Omega Workshops in 1913.

Etchells was also friendly with Wyndham Lewis, the future leader of the Vorticists, to whom he had been introduced by Charles Ginner.  When Lewis stormed out of the Omega in October 1913 accusing Roger Fry of misappropriating Lewis's part in a commission to produce a room for that year's Ideal Home Exhibition, Etchells went with him, and made his support for Lewis clear in a letter to Maynard Keynes (King's College Cambridge).  Etchells now joined with Lewis in a rival to the Omega, The Rebel Art Centre, and his work became open to influences that would not have been welcome in Bloomsbury.  In the first number of the Vorticist magazine, Blast (June 1914), Etchells' plates show him trying his hand at Cubist drawings clearly influenced by Picasso's 1909 Heads of Fernande Olivier. Two landscapes, Dieppe and Patchopolis, both rough primitivist ink drawings, show influence from Futurism and Expressionism - two movements that were anathema to Bloomsbury.

Etchells was not a signatory to the Vorticist manifesto, but exhibited as a Vorticist in the group's only British exhibition at the Doré Gallery in 1915.  Though his work is clearly closely related to Lewis's (particularly in the work offered for sale here), it also shows distinct differences. Etchells' picture space is freer and less claustrophobic than Lewis's, though relying as much on the baffling configurations of irreconcileable geometry to achieve its sense of exhilarating dynamism.  The present, recently discovered drawing shows Etchells at his most 'Vorticist', stylistically at his closest to Lewis, Helen Saunders and Edward Wadsworth.  It is clearly related to the British Council's Gouache: Stilts(?) (1914-15).  Both works differentiate the darker background of the left-hand side of the picture from the lighter 'foreground' to the right, separated in both cases by a zig-zagging form, perhaps of a figure, from top to bottom.  The foreshortened lighter block, with its regular pattern of  rectangles facing the viewer, apparently 'held' by the figure in front of the dark background, is echoed by a similar more elongated form rising from the left-hand edge of Gouache: Stilts.  The triangular wedge pointing towards the right hand edge of the present work also has its counterpart in the gouache.

Remarkably, the present work is executed exclusively in black ink and grey wash. The reason for this can only be conjectured.  It is possible that it was produced specifically with photographic reproduction in mind – perhaps for the second issue of Blast (July 1915).  As it turned out, there were insufficient funds for half-tone reproductions in that issue, and only works suitable for reproduction in black line-block form were chosen for illustration. (An exception is the small photographic reproduction of Gaudier-Brzeska's sculpture, Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound).  Colour and tone were carefully excluded by the artists in the reproduced works, though both Wyndham Lewis and Etchells added colour to their original ink drawings after the blocks had been made: Etchells' Progression (reproduced p. 53 of Blast no. 2) is now in the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford, with colour and a signature added after its 1915 reproduction. 

Etchells continued his association with Wyndham Lewis and other Vorticists after the First World War, becoming a member of 'Group X' and exhibiting with them. His abstract 'landscapes', Cornish Arabesque and Gunwalloe were reproduced in the second (1922) number of Lewis's magazine The Tyro.  Etchells later became well-known as the translator of Le Corbusier and the architect of London's first 'modern' building at 233 High Holborn.

 

Paul Edwards