Max Beerbohm | "The Patron", pencil and watercolour drawing, 1920, framed and glazed

The Property of the late John Payne

Max Beerbohm

"The Patron"

280 x 330mm., pencil and watercolour drawing, lengthy captions by Beerbohm, signed and dated lower right "Max 1920", mounted, framed and glazed, minor spotting at right edge

Reproduced within the artist's A Survey (published 1921), Beerbohm forecasts the Labour Party's attitude towards poetry.

Beerbohm dedicates the drawing "with all possible sympathy and good-will... to those of our young poets who, not knowing very much... about politics and the deplorable part which human nature plays in politics, imagine that under the domination of LABOUR the Liberal arts might have a decent chance."

The minister of education is shouting at a pale and ghostly poet: "Wot? You'll dedicate your mon-you-mental translation of Pett Rark's sonnits to me if I'll get you our-door relief for six months? Oh, really! And you say you're one o' the Workers yourself?? Worker? Blackmailer - that's what you are! Outside!"

LITERATURE:

Hart-Davis 1991

PROVENANCE:

The Leicester Galleries, May 1921 (exhibition labels); John Byers; Sotheby's Sussex, 10 October 1995, lot 1206; Abbot & Holder (exhibition labels)

EXHIBITED:

Leicester Galleries, Beerbohm Exhibition, May 1921