Wyndham Lewis

Madge Pulsford

1920

© Wyndham Lewis and the estate of Mrs G A Wyndham Lewis by kind permission of the Wyndham Lewis Memorial Trust (a registered charity)

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Not on display

Artist: Wyndham Lewis 1882–1957
Medium: Chalk on paper
Dimensions: Support: 279 × 381 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by the Contemporary Art Society 1955
Reference: T00021

Catalogue entry

T00021 MADGE PULSFORD 1920

Inscr. ‘W. Lewis 1920’ b.r.
Black chalk, 11×15 (28×38).
Presented by the Contemporary Art Society 1955.
Coll: Presented by Sydney Schiff to the C.A.S. 1926.

The drawing is inscribed ‘red’ (b.l.) and ‘open windows’ (top centre) and would seem to be a sketch for a finished portrait; however, the artist said that he did not paint a portrait in oils of Madge Pulsford and the sitter wrote (19 July 1956) that ‘Wyndham Lewis wasn't drawing a commissioned portrait. He had some idea of a triptych of types in his mind and was using me for one’. Other drawings made of Madge Pulsford during the same period include No.T.193 below, one dated 1920 in the Rutherston Loan Collection, Manchester City Art Galleries (exh. Tate Gallery, July–August 1956 (68)), and an undated drawing belonging to Sir John Rothenstein (exh. Tate Gallery, July–August 1956 (62)).

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I