ROY DE MAISTRE

Zwemmer Gallery, London (label on reverse)
Dimitri Mitrinoviæ
Trustees of the New Atlantis Foundation
Glady MacDermot; thence by descent
Private collection, Switzerland

Roy de Maistre: A restrospective exhibition of paintings and drawings 1917-1960, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, May-June 1960, cat. 34

This work is presented in a brown timber frame which appears original. There are five minor areas of paint loss along frame rebate and minor scuffing to right hand centre. Small area of paint loss lower centre. This work has no retouchings and is in original condition.
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With its combination of triangular rising floor, open doorway and variously angled architectural planes, the present work is clearly related to de Maistre's Francis Bacon's Studio – New Atlantis sequence (see lot XXX in the present catalogue). However, this painting also references the artist's developing commitment to the Roman Catholic faith in its incorporation of two figures from traditional Christian Annunciation iconography. The figure on the right is a synthetic divine messenger, a combination of the Archangel Gabriel and the white dove of the Holy Spirit, its impregnating shaft of light striking  a humble brown peg-doll virgin.

The picture is very much of its time, the early 1930s. Its organic, pierced-bone forms are reminiscent of the work of Jean Arp, Constantin Brancusi and especially Pablo Picasso, particularly the works Picasso made in response to Mathias Grünewald's Isenheim Altarpiece. There may be a direct connection to the latter: eight of the Picasso drawings were reproduced in the first issue of the journal Minotaure, which came out in Britain early in 1933.  Not surprisingly, there are also more general stylistic resonances with the work of de Maistre's younger British contemporaries such as Graham Sutherland, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson and Francis Bacon. In particular, the spread wings/arms of the Angel of the Annunciation coincide with those in Bacon's 1933 Crucifixion, his first version of the subject, and the work that initially brought him to public attention as a painter.

1.  see David Sylvester, Looking back at Francis Bacon, Thames & Hudson, London, 2000, pp. 13, 15
2.  'The Crucifixion was exhibited at the Mayor Gallery, at that time the leading avant-garde gallery in London, and was purchased by Sir Michael Sadler, probably the most important collector in Britain of contemporary art; the book in which it was reproduced was Art Now by Herbert Read, the essential introduction to international contemporary art for two generations or more in Britain' (ibid., p. 15)

We are most grateful to Heather Johnson, Andrew Brighton and Elizabeth Gertsakis for their assistance in cataloguing this work.