Edward Wadsworth, A.R.A. 1889-1949

London, Arthur Tooth and Sons, An Exhibition of Tempera Paintings, 1938, no.18;
Melbourne, Melbourne Herald Exhibition, 1939, details untraced;
Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute, loan exhibit;
London, Tate Gallery, Edward Wadsworth Memorial Exhibition, 1951, no.25;
London, P.& D.Colnaghi & Co., Edward Wadsworth 1889-1949: Paintings, Drawings and Prints, 1974, no.66, illustrated in the exhibition catalogue;
Portsmouth, City Museum and Art Gallery, loan exhibit, 1981-83;
Bradford, Cartwright Hall, A Genius of Industrial England: Edward Wadsworth 1889-1949, travelling to London, Camden Arts Centre, 1990, no.112, illustrated in colour in the exhibition catalogue;
London, Ben Uri Gallery, Making Waves: Modern British Masterpieces from a European Trust, 2003, p.39, plate 16, illustrated in colour in the exhibition catalogue.

Barbara Wadsworth, Edward Wadsworth: A Painter’s Life, Salisbury 1989, p.210, no. W/A 159;
Jeremy Lewison, ‘The Marine Still-Lifes & Later Nautical Paintings’, in Jeremy Lewison (ed.), A Genius of Industrial England - Edward Wadsworth 1889-1949, Bradford, 1990, pp.67-91;
Arkwright Arts Trust and Bradford Art Galleries and Museums, 1990, no.112, illustrated in colour, p.61.

Wadsworth's marine still lives of the mid to late 1930s retain the same level of heightened clarity that had been seen in the paintings of the later 1920s. Here the compositional emphasis moves away from the obvious building of still-life objects in a way that almost echoes Dutch art of the seventeenth century towards a more open manner, using the various objects in a way that suggests a metaphysical and animistic approach. A particular element which appears frequently is the placing of the smaller and apparently more fragile objects hanging from a rail or bar, often interlinked in a way which has been suggested may have a root in the artist’s knowledge of the work of Alexander Calder.

The wide panoramic viewpoint of The English Channel is unusual in Wadsworth’s work, the artist usually concentrating on a specific arrangement of objects. However, he is here presenting us with five groups of white-painted poles and cork floats, each set into the sand and supporting a pentagon of similar poles. The rigorous geometry of the pentagon is upset almost everywhere we look. Red and blue flags flutter in a strong breeze and on the horizon, the smoke from the funnel of a steamer blows briskly away. A Thonet-style bentwood chair sinks drunkenly into the sand, giving the scene a slightly surrealist air not dissimilar to contemporary work by Tristram Hillier. This air of suggested desolation is emphasised by the tarpaulin thrown, scarecrow-like, over the life-belt post and the rough plank abandoned at its base. In his earlier nautical paintings, Wadsworth had often drawn on European influences such as Giorgio de Chirico, Pierre Roy and Jean Metzinger. However in The English Channel we see a distancing of these painters and also perhaps a subconscious reflection of the international situation. In the early part of the year, Wadsworth had painted World of Happy Days (private collection) as a wedding present for his daughter who had married a German in Munich in March 1934, an event which Wadsworth and his wife attended. It was a nostalgic painting which echoes his work of the 1920s, and The English Channel was painted immediately after it. The structure of poles and the title could therefore suggest a form of barrier in the face of the rising totalitarianism growing in Europe.

The present work is one of only five pictures painted in 1934. This relative dearth in productivity was due partly to his daughter's marriage in Munich to J.A. von Bethmann-Hollweg, his involvement with the Unit One exhibition (which toured from April) and a car accident in May that caused him significant psychological damage. The slightly smaller sister work to English Channel, Visibility Moderate painted in the same year is now in the collecion of Aberdeen Art Gallery.