Glyn Philpot, R.A. 1884-1937

The Artist’s family
Private Collection, from whence acquired by the present owner

London, Royal Academy, Summer Exhibition, 1932, no.620;
Cologne, International Festival of Religious Art, 1948 (unnumbered);
Brighton Art Gallery, Glyn Philpot R.A., 1884-1937, April - May 1953, no.55;
London, National Portrait Gallery, Glyn Philpot 1884-1937: Edwardian Aesthete to Thirties Modernist, November 1984 – February 1985, no.44, illustrated in the exhibition catalogue.

Daisy Philpot, Manuscript catalogue of paintings by Glyn Philpot, c.1938-1957, p.21;
A.C.Sewter, Glyn Philpot: 1884-1937, Batsford, London, 1951, illustrated, pl.68;
Robin Gibson, Glyn Philpot 1884-1937: Edwardian Aesthete to Thirties Modernist, London, 1984, pp.29 & 73, illustrated;
J.G.P.Delaney, Glyn Philpot: His Life & Art, Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot, 1999, pp.113, 116-117, 122, illustrated fig.23.

My picture is very strange – a real expression of something I felt very deeply … it is liberating me for future work, for I am quite naturally evolving a new way of painting to meet the new things I want to do (the Artist, letter to Father Gray, 14^th September 1931)

It appears that in around 1930, Philpot was in the process of reassessing both his working and personal life and the possibility of a move to Paris seems to have been mooted, perhaps mirroring the same move made by his friend Vivian Forbes in 1930. In the spring of 1931, Philpot moved to Paris, initially staying with Forbes at Le Royal hotel, Blvd Raspail. By the summer, however, he was considering taking a studio alone at 216, Blvd Raspail. A severe modernist space in the Bauhaus style, the building, which had been designed by Bruno el Houken for Helena Rubenstein, was divided into ateliers for artists. The £1,000 fee for a portrait of an American, Mrs Crane, helped his qualms over expense and he moved in shortly after.

Furnished in the latest modernist taste, it was here that many of Philpot’s best works were produced and appears as a backdrop to a number of paintings, including Triple Fugue and the three Tom Whiskey portraits (all in private collections). Whilst his work went well, moving towards a new style, Philpot appears to have been somewhat unsettled in the studio and this is clear in the present work. The savage and fierce gaze as the angel looks in through the metal-framed windows of the artist’s studio strikes a very strong note and the dry and flat handling of the paint is a world away from the earlier rich chiaroscuro-laden painting style which had made his reputation. Colour has become a key element within the painting, and the vivid red flashes from the figure not only give the painting a vortex-like diagonal compositional structure which heightens the sense of unbalance and unreality, but also imbue the figure with a distinctly threatening air. Interestingly, these flame-like features mirror the costume design Philpot had produced for Satan in a poetry and ballet revue staged by Lydia Lopokova at the Cambridge Arts Theatre in December 1930, thus heightening the suggestion that the angel of the title is perhaps a little less charitable that might usually be imagined. 

First shown at the Royal Academy alongside Aphrodite (Private Collection) in 1932, these two paintings were singled out by critics for outraged attack. The standard forms for critical derision of the period generally tended to use Picasso as a gold-standard of debased and outrageous art, but the present work has much more in common with contemporary German painting, especially the Neue Sachlichkeit painting that Philpot may have seen during his visit to Berlin in the autumn of 1931, and of which most British critics would have been unaware.