Life lines: Recently acquired 20th Century drawings
Past display archive
31 October 2009 - 25 April 2010
Room 31 case display
Free
Ezra Pound
by Wyndham Lewis
1920
NPG 6728
The display commences with Dora Carrington’s striking early self-portrait of 1910. Carrington later became obsessed by Lytton Strachey, the eminent biographer and a central figure in the Bloomsbury Group. After she married Ralph Partridge, the three formed a ménage a trois until Strachey’s death in 1932. Soon after, Carrington took her own life. Her affectionate 1916 study of Strachey is also displayed.
In bold contrast, Wyndham Lewis’s Vorticist-inspired portrait of Ezra Pound depicts the poet 1920 shortly after the first appearance of his major work, The Cantos. This drawing is paired with Lewis’s portrait of Arthur Bliss which shows the composer in 1922, the year of the first performance of his celebrated Colour Symphony. Together they exemplify Lewis’s terse but telling draughtsmanship at this time.
The centre of the display is formed by a substantial group of portraits by William Rothenstein allocated to the Gallery by HM Government as part of the in lieu scheme. Sitters include include the conductor Sir Henry Wood; the creators of the garden at Sissinghurst, Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West; and the artist Leon Underwood. His portrait of Frieda Lawrence, who was described by her husband D H Lawrence as ‘the one possible woman for me’, is shown alongside.
The display concludes with major post-war additions to the collection, including Stanley Spencer’s magisterial 1951drawing of Sir John Rothenstein who was then Director of the Tate Gallery; the only drawing of the poet Ted Hughes – sketched by his wife the writer Sylvia Plath on a sheet of her journal; and a moving portrait of Stephen Hawking by Yolande Sonnabend made in 1985.
Related portraits
- Sir Henry Joseph Wood (NPG 6701)
- Dora Carrington (NPG 6736)
- Lytton Strachey (NPG 6738)
- Frances Hodgkins (NPG 6686)
- Ezra Pound (NPG 6728)
- Leon Underwood (NPG 6711)
- Sir Arthur Bliss (NPG 6865)
- Geoffrey Dawson (NPG 6688)
- Henry Moore (NPG 6625)
- Harold Nicolson (NPG 6715)
- Vita Sackville-West (NPG 6716)
- Sir James George Frazer (NPG 6691)
- Ithell Colquhoun (NPG 6486)
- Rabindranath Tagore (NPG 6697)
- Humbert Wolfe (NPG 6831)
- Frieda Emma Johanna Maria Lawrence (née von Richthofen) (NPG 6614)
- Eric Newton (NPG 6622)
- Jan Struther (Joyce Anstruther, later Placzek) (NPG 6665)
- Carel Weight (NPG 6606)
- John Rothenstein (NPG 6695)
- Eric Ernest Williams (NPG 6469)
- Ted Hughes (NPG 6739)
- Emmanuel Levy (NPG 6741)
- Humphrey Searle (NPG 6599)
- Richard Edward Morphet (NPG 6826)
- Dennis Lloyd, Baron Lloyd of Hampstead (NPG 6866)
- Stephen Hawking (NPG 6802(1))
Related sitters
- Sir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss
- Dora Carrington
- (Margaret) Ithell Colquhoun
- Geoffrey Dawson
- Sir James George Frazer
- Stephen William Hawking
- Frances Mary Hodgkins
- Edward James ('Ted') Hughes
- Frieda Emma Johanna Maria Lawrence (née von Richthofen)
- Emmanuel Levy
- Dennis Lloyd, Baron Lloyd of Hampstead
- Henry Moore
- Richard Edward Morphet
- Eric Newton
- Sir Harold George Nicolson
- Ezra Pound
- Sir John Knewstub Maurice Rothenstein
- Victoria Mary ('Vita') Sackville-West
- Humphrey Searle
- (Giles) Lytton Strachey
- Jan Struther (Joyce Anstruther, later Placzek)
- Rabindranath Tagore
- Leon Underwood
- Carel Victor Morlais Weight
- Eric Ernest Williams
- Humbert Wolfe
- Sir Henry Joseph Wood