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

Bradford, Cartwright Hall Art Gallery and toured to Camden Arts Centre, London, Edward Wadsworth 1889-1949: A Genius of Industrial England, October 1989 - January 1990, no.137;
London, Tate Gallery, New Displays, 1993, no.9.

Barbara Wadsworth, Edward Wadsworth: A Painter’s Life, Salisbury, 1989, no.W/A247.

Flowers make few appearances in Wadsworth’s work, but in 1945, after the end of WWII, he began painting again at his home, Maresfield, in Sussex. Drawing on the roses in full bloom at the front of the house and the stark linearity of a painting by Ferdinand Leger which hung in the sitting room, Wadsworth created a series of flower based images which combine the natural characteristics of the natural subjects with bright, single colour backgrounds and three-dimensional geometric shapes to create images of apparent simplicity but deep complexity. The present work was a favourite of the artist’s wife Fanny, and when it was sent to Tooth’s gallery for exhibition, a smaller version was painted for her. Inscribed ‘For F’, it is recorded by the artist’s daughter as being the only work of his own that he ever gave her.

In many ways, Wadsworth’s work of the post-1945 period saw a return to the abstraction of his early career, but it is accomplished with a purity of subject and execution that is almost entirely absent from the work of others of his generation.

The Wadsworths first met David Enders in Buxton in late 1944 and became a good friend, acquiring three important paintings directly from the family. An erudite and learned man, he maintained a lifelong interest in the works of T.E.Lawrence, his significant collection of which was dispersed at auction after his death in 2001.