Edward Wadsworth

(British, 1889-1949)

Conche and Bowsprit 53.3 x 38.1 cm. (21 x 15 in.)

Footnotes

Provenance
Yvonne Gregory (1889-1970), thence by descent to
June Mardall (neé Park)
Cyril and June Mardall

Exhibited
Paris, Galérie Barbazanges, February 1927, cat.no.9
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Gallery, May-June 1927
London, Arthur Tooth & Sons, Tempera Paintings by Edward Wadsworth, 23 May-8 June 1929, cat.no.26
London, Colnaghi & Co., Paintings, Drawings and Prints, 16 July-16 August 1974, cat.no.51

Literature
Barbara Wadsworth, Edward Wadsworth, A Painter's Life, Michael Russell, Wiltshire, 1989, cat.no.W/A82 (listed as 'Conche and Bowsprit/Blue Horizon or Shells')
Jonathan Black, Edward Wadsworth: Form, Feeling and Calculation, The Complete Paintings and Drawings, Philip Wilson Publishers, London, 2005, p.179, cat.no.232 (ill.b&w)

During the Spring and Summer of 1923 Edward Wadsworth and his wife, along with the chauffeur, Alfred 'Nobby' Clarke, spent their holiday touring France and Italy. Part of this journey saw them visiting towns and harbours in the south of France, including St. Tropez and Marseilles. As Jonathan Black notes of their time in St. Tropez, this was three or four years ahead of writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Somerset Maugham and the artists Picasso and Raoul Dufy gravitating there, among many others. He comments, 'In many ways, Wadsworth and his wife were very much a part of this vanguard of avant-garde figures seeking the summer sun along the hitherto neglected coast of the south of France' (Jonathan Black, Edward Wadsworth, Form, Feeling and Calculation, The Complete Paintings and Drawings, Philip Wilson Publishers, London, 2005, p.56). During this extended excursion along the Provençal coastline Wadsworth collected, from both the beaches and the ships' chandlers' shops, a variety of large and exotic looking shells. Three of these, the Pacific Triton, Indian bear's paw clam and murex (the 'conches' of the title), are used as the primary subject of the present work. The first of these is located on the left, mounted on a blue geometric plinth, the clam is positioned in the foreground and the latter is tucked in just behind it, standing upright. All of them are incredibly beautiful objects with intricate patterning and subtle colouring which greatly appealed to Wadsworth. Barbara Wadsworth offers insightful detail regarding these marine creatures in her biography:

'Now it happens that the Pacific Triton can measure anything from eight to sixteen inches in length – Edward's specimen was in fact eleven and a half inches by five and a half, which is roughly four times as large as similar shells found around the British Isles. The Indian bear's paw clam can be well over six inches and the murex of a corresponding size. It was the Triton and the clam that were given so many star roles to play, both having so provocative a diversity of shape, and he also used the lettered cone and other variations of this species. Occasionally he reduced or augmented slightly the measurements of the shells according to the necessities of a composition and the size of its panel, but in the main their proportions were accurately conveyed (Barbara Wadsworth, Edward Wadsworth, A Painter's life, Michael Russell Publishing, Salisbury, 1989, p.146).

She also observed, 'Many have played a role of secondary importance in paintings of the past, but for Edward they were so significant and exciting in form as to justify their employment as portrait subjects in themselves (Op. cit. p.145).
Behind the shells, on the left-hand side, is the 'bowsprit' of the title, a spar running out from a ship's bow, to which the forestays are fastened. Of this, Jonathan Black has remarked the sculpturesque quality of the folded sails recall Wadsworth's interest circa 1924-26 in hanging drapery of drying washing in the narrow side alleys of the port city of Marseilles; Rue Fontaine de Calyus, Marseilles of 1924 (Leicester City Museum Service) and Rue Bompart, Marseilles of 1925 (private collection) are particularly impressive and relevant. His interest in depicting ships during this time was acute. The same year as Conche and Bowsprit was painted Wadsworth executed a series of copper plate engravings for a book, titled Sailing Ships of the Western Mediterranean.

It is interesting to consider contemporaneous reviews of Wadsworth's paintings from the late 1920s, which drew comparisons with the Baroque and Rococo aesthetic, albeit with a modernist angle. Jonathan Black neatly sums this up:
'A baroque or rococo element was also observed in the meticulously detailed and impressively sized shells that dominate many of the still lifes Wadsworth exhibited in November 1926 such as Coquillages, 1926 [The Whitworth Art Gallery, The University of Manchester], Fruits de Mer, 1926 [Stedeljik Museum, Amsterdam] and Conche and Bowsprit, 1926 [the present work]. Indeed, these works were identified by many critics as a welcome development in Wadsworth's aesthetic. Apollo, for example, described his still lifes as "statements...as clean and exact as a shell-case" enlivened by the artist evidently revelling in the "exotic shapes" of the shells "for the sheer delight of rhythm". Furthermore, the still lifes admirably demonstrated both his "extraordinary sense of design" [and] exquisite sense of colour" as well as his being "... the most severely intellectual and also the most characteristically English of the advanced moderns"' (Jonathan Black, Edward Wadsworth, Form, Feeling and Calculation, The Complete Paintings and Drawings, Philip Wilson Publishers, London, 2005, pp.62 & 65).

Following the exhibition which Conche and Bowsprit appeared in during 1927, in Paris at Galérie Barbazanges (see exhibition history above), French critics described Wadsworth as an 'English Surrealist', perhaps the first English artist to be labelled as such, two to three years prior to Paul Nash, for example.