Wyndham Lewis

Mrs Schiff

1923–4

© 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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In Tate Britain

Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One

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Artist: Wyndham Lewis 1882–1957
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 1257 x 1003 mm
framed: 1434 x 1177 x 90 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Purchased 1956
Reference: T00100

Catalogue entry

T00100 MRS SCHIFF c. 1922

Not inscribed.
Canvas, 49 1/2×39 1/2 (126×100), stuck on to a second canvas, 50×40 (127×101·5), over which the painted surface extends; the head and neck are painted on an inserted piece of canvas, c. 14×9 1/4 (36×23·5).
Presented by Sir Edward Beddington Behrens 1956.
Coll: Sydney Schiff; given by his widow to her nephew E. Beddington Behrens.
Exh: Tate Gallery, July–August 1956 (120, repr. pl.7), and Arts Council tour, 1956 (39, repr. pl.1).

Probably painted at the same time as the drawing of Mrs Schiff signed and dated 1922 in the possession of O.Raymond Drey (exh. Tate Gallery, 1956 (79)).

Mrs Violet Schiff, who died in 1962 at the age of eighty-six, was the wife of Sydney Schiff who wrote under the name of ‘Stephen Hudson’. In the 1920s, in particular, their house was the meeting-place of many artists, musicians and writers, including beside Wyndham Lewis such figures as Delius, the Middleton Murrys and T. S. Eliot; they were also close friends of Marcel Proust and Max Beerbohm.

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