Percy Wyndham Lewis (18 November 1882 – 7 March 1957) was a British writer, painter and critic. He was a co-founder of the
Vorticist
Vorticism was a London-based Modernism, modernist art movement formed in 1914 by the writer and artist Wyndham Lewis. The movement was partially inspired by Cubism and was introduced to the public by means of the publication of the Vorticist mani ...
movement in art and edited ''
BLAST
Blast or The Blast may refer to:
*Explosion, a rapid increase in volume and release of energy in an extreme manner
*Detonation, an exothermic front accelerating through a medium that eventually drives a shock front
Film
* ''Blast'' (1997 film), ...
,'' the literary magazine of the Vorticists.
His novels include ''
Tarr
''Tarr'' is a modernist novel by Wyndham Lewis, written in 1909–11, revised and expanded in 1914–15 and first serialized in the magazine ''The Egoist
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already ...
'' (1918) and ''The Human Age'' trilogy, composed of ''The Childermass'' (1928), ''Monstre Gai'' (1955) and ''Malign Fiesta'' (1955). A fourth volume, titled ''The Trial of Man'', was unfinished at the time of his death. He also wrote two autobiographical volumes: ''
Blasting and Bombardiering'' (1937) and ''Rude Assignment: A Narrative of my Career Up-to-Date'' (1950).
Biography
Early life
Lewis was born on 18 November 1882, reputedly on his father's yacht off the Canadian province of
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia ( ; ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. Nova Scotia is Latin for "New Scotland".
Most of the population are native Eng ...
.
[Richard Cork]
"Lewis, (Percy) Wyndham (1882–1957)"
''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004. His English mother, Anne Stuart Lewis (née Prickett), and American father, Charles Edward Lewis, separated about 1893.
His mother subsequently returned to England. Lewis was educated in England at
Rugby School
Rugby School is a public school (English independent boarding school for pupils aged 13–18) in Rugby, Warwickshire, England.
Founded in 1567 as a free grammar school for local boys, it is one of the oldest independent schools in Britain. ...
and then
Slade School of Fine Art
The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised a ...
,
University College London
, mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £143 million (2020)
, budget = ...
. He spent most of the 1900s travelling around Europe and studying art in Paris. While in Paris, he attended lectures by
Henri Bergson
Henri-Louis Bergson (; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopherHenri Bergson. 2014. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 13 August 2014, from https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/61856/Henri-Bergson Le Roy, ...
on
process philosophy
Process philosophy, also ontology of becoming, or processism, is an approach to philosophy that identifies processes, changes, or shifting relationships as the only true elements of the ordinary, everyday real world. In opposition to the classi ...
.
Early work and development of Vorticism (1908–1915)
In 1908, Lewis moved to London, where he would reside for much of his life. In 1909, he published his first work, accounts of his travels in Brittany, in
Ford Madox Ford's ''The English Review''. He was a founding member of the
Camden Town Group
The Camden Town Group was a group of English Post-Impressionist artists founded in 1911 and active until 1913. They gathered frequently at the studio of painter Walter Sickert in the Camden Town area of London.
History
In 1908, critic Frank ...
, which brought him into close contact with the
Bloomsbury Group
The Bloomsbury Group—or Bloomsbury Set—was a group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the first half of the 20th century, including Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster and Lytton St ...
, particularly
Roger Fry and
Clive Bell, with whom he soon fell out.
In 1912, Lewis exhibited his work at the second Postimpressionist exhibition:
Cubo-Futurist
Cubo-Futurism (also called Russian Futurism or Kubo-Futurizm) was an art movement that arose in early 20th century Russian Empire, defined by its amalgamation of the artistic elements found in Italian Futurism and French Analytical Cubism. Cubo- ...
illustrations to ''Timon of Athens'' and three major oil paintings. In 1912, he was commissioned to produce a decorative mural, a drop curtain, and more designs for
The Cave of the Golden Calf
The Cave of the Golden Calf was a night club in London. In existence for only two years immediately before the First World War, it epitomised decadence, and still inspires cultural events. Its name is a reference to the Golden Calf of the Bibli ...
, an avant-garde cabaret and nightclub on
Heddon Street
Regent Street is a major shopping street in the West End of London. It is named after George, the Prince Regent (later George IV) and was laid out under the direction of the architect John Nash and James Burton. It runs from Waterloo Pla ...
.
From 1913 to 1915, Lewis developed the style of geometric abstraction for which he is best known today, which his friend
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...
dubbed "
Vorticism". Lewis sought to combine the strong structure of
Cubism
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
, which he found was not "alive", with the liveliness of
Futurist art, which lacked structure. The combination was a strikingly dramatic critique of modernity. In his early visual works, Lewis may have been influenced by Bergson's
process philosophy
Process philosophy, also ontology of becoming, or processism, is an approach to philosophy that identifies processes, changes, or shifting relationships as the only true elements of the ordinary, everyday real world. In opposition to the classi ...
. Though he was later savagely critical of Bergson, he admitted in a letter to Theodore Weiss (19 April 1949) that he "began by embracing his evolutionary system."
Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his car ...
was an equally important influence.
Lewis had a brief tenure at Roger Fry's
Omega Workshops
The Omega Workshops Ltd. was a design enterprise founded by members of the Bloomsbury Group and established in July 1913. Shone, Richard. (1999) ''The Art of Bloomsbury: Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant''. Princeton: Princeton University ...
, but left after a quarrel with Fry over a commission to provide wall decorations for the
Daily Mail
The ''Daily Mail'' is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper and news websitePeter Wilb"Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail: The man who hates liberal Britain", ''New Statesman'', 19 December 2013 (online version: 2 January 2014) publish ...
Ideal Home Exhibition
The Ideal Home Show (formerly called the Ideal Home Exhibition) is an annual event in London, England, held at Olympia . The show was devised by the '' Daily Mail'' newspaper in 1908 and continued to be run by the ''Daily Mail'' until 2009. I ...
, which Lewis believed Fry had misappropriated. He and several other Omega artists started a competing workshop called the
Rebel Art Centre. The Centre operated for only four months, but it gave birth to the Vorticist group and its publication, ''
BLAST
Blast or The Blast may refer to:
*Explosion, a rapid increase in volume and release of energy in an extreme manner
*Detonation, an exothermic front accelerating through a medium that eventually drives a shock front
Film
* ''Blast'' (1997 film), ...
''.
["The Art and Ideas of Wyndham Lewis"](_blank)
, FluxEuropa. In ''BLAST,'' Lewis formally expounded the Vorticist aesthetic in a manifesto, distinguishing it from other avant-garde practices. He also wrote and published a play, ''Enemy of the Stars''. It is a proto-absurdist,
Expressionist
Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radi ...
drama. Lewis scholar Melania Terrazas identifies it as a precursor to the plays of
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and Tragicomedy, tr ...
.
World War I (1915–1918)
![Wyndham Lewis photo by George Charles Beresford 1917](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Wyndham_Lewis_photo_by_George_Charles_Beresford_1917.jpg)
In 1915, the Vorticists held their only U.K. exhibition before the movement broke up, largely as a result of World War I. Lewis himself was posted to the
western front Western Front or West Front may refer to:
Military frontiers
* Western Front (World War I), a military frontier to the west of Germany
*Western Front (World War II), a military frontier to the west of Germany
*Western Front (Russian Empire), a maj ...
and served as a second lieutenant in the Royal Artillery. Much of his time was spent in
Forward Observation Posts looking down at apparently deserted German lines, registering targets and calling down fire from batteries massed around the rim of the
Ypres Salient
The Ypres Salient around Ypres in Belgium was the scene of several battles and an extremely important part of the Western front during the First World War.
Ypres district
Ypres lies at the junction of the Ypres–Comines Canal and the Ieperlee. ...
. He made vivid accounts of narrow misses and deadly artillery duels.
After the
Third Battle of Ypres
The Third Battle of Ypres (german: link=no, Dritte Flandernschlacht; french: link=no, Troisième Bataille des Flandres; nl, Derde Slag om Ieper), also known as the Battle of Passchendaele (), was a campaign of the First World War, fought by ...
, Lewis was appointed an official
war artist for both the Canadian and British governments. For the Canadians, he painted
A Canadian Gun-pit (1918) from sketches made on
Vimy Ridge
The Battle of Vimy Ridge was part of the Battle of Arras, in the Pas-de-Calais department of France, during the First World War. The main combatants were the four divisions of the Canadian Corps in the First Army, against three divisions of ...
. For the British, he painted one of his best-known works, ''
A Battery Shelled
''A Battery Shelled'' is a 1919 painting by the English artist Wyndham Lewis. It depicts a scene from the Western Front of World War I. It was commissioned for the proposed Hall of Remembrance.
Description
A number of men are seen working and ...
'' (1919), drawing on his own experience at Ypres.
Lewis exhibited his war drawings and some other paintings of the war in an exhibition, "Guns", in 1918.
Although the Vorticist group broke up after the war, Lewis's patron,
John Quinn, organized a Vorticist exhibition at the Penguin Club in New York in 1917. His first novel, ''
Tarr
''Tarr'' is a modernist novel by Wyndham Lewis, written in 1909–11, revised and expanded in 1914–15 and first serialized in the magazine ''The Egoist
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already ...
'', was serialized in ''
The Egoist'' during 1916–17 and published in book form in 1918. It is widely regarded as one of the key modernist texts.
Lewis later documented his experiences and opinions of this period of his life in the autobiographical ''Blasting and Bombardiering'' (1937), which covered his life up to 1926.
''Tyros'' and writing (1918–1929)
After the war, Lewis resumed his career as a painter with a major exhibition, ''Tyros and Portraits'', at the
Leicester Galleries in 1921. "Tyros" were satirical caricatures intended to comment on the culture of the "new epoch" that succeeded the First World War. ''A Reading of
Ovid
Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom ...
'' and ''Mr Wyndham Lewis as a Tyro'' are the only surviving oil paintings from this series. Lewis also launched his second magazine, ''The Tyro'', of which there were only two issues. The second (1922) contained an important statement of Lewis's visual aesthetic: "Essay on the Objective of Plastic Art in our Time". It was during the early 1920s that he perfected his incisive draughtsmanship.
By the late 1920s, he concentrated on writing. He launched yet another magazine, ''The Enemy'' (1927–1929), largely written by himself and declaring its belligerent critical stance in its title. The magazine and other theoretical and critical works he published from 1926 to 1929 mark a deliberate separation from the avant-garde and his previous associates. He believed that their work failed to show sufficient critical awareness of those ideologies that worked against truly revolutionary change in the West, and therefore became a vehicle for these pernicious ideologies. His major theoretical and cultural statement from this period is ''The Art of Being Ruled'' (1926).
''Time and Western Man'' (1927) is a cultural and philosophical discussion that includes penetrating critiques of
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the Modernism, modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important ...
,
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...
and
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...
that are still read. Lewis also attacked the
process philosophy
Process philosophy, also ontology of becoming, or processism, is an approach to philosophy that identifies processes, changes, or shifting relationships as the only true elements of the ordinary, everyday real world. In opposition to the classi ...
of Bergson,
Samuel Alexander,
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead (15 February 1861 – 30 December 1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. He is best known as the defining figure of the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which today has found applica ...
, and others. By 1931 he was advocating the art of ancient Egypt as impossible to surpass.
Fiction and political writing (1930–1936)
![Wyndham Lewis photo by George Charles Beresford 1929](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Wyndham_Lewis_photo_by_George_Charles_Beresford_1929.jpg)
In 1930 Lewis published ''
The Apes of God
''The Apes of God'' is a 1930 novel by the British artist and writer Wyndham Lewis. It is a satire of London's contemporary literary and artistic scene. The Sitwells, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury group ar ...
'', a biting satirical attack on the London literary scene, including a long chapter caricaturing the
Sitwell
Sitwell is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
* A member of the Sitwell literary family:
:* Edith Sitwell
:* Osbert Sitwell
:* Sacheverell Sitwell
* The Sitwell Baronets, holders of a hereditary baronetcy awarded by the British ...
family, which may have harmed his position in the literary world. In 1937 he published ''The Revenge for Love,'' set in the period leading up to the
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlism, Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebeli ...
and regarded by many as his best novel. It is strongly critical of communist activity in Spain and presents English intellectual
fellow travellers as deluded.
Despite serious illness necessitating several operations, he was very productive as a critic and painter. He produced a book of poems, ''One-Way Song'', in 1933, and a revised version of ''Enemy of the Stars''. An important book of critical essays also belongs to this period: ''Men without Art'' (1934). It grew out of a defence of Lewis's satirical practice in ''The Apes of God'' and puts forward a theory of 'non-moral', or metaphysical, satire. The book is probably best remembered for one of the first commentaries on
Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most of ...
and a famous essay on
Hemingway.
Return to painting (1936–1941)
After becoming better known for his writing than his painting in the 1920s and early 1930s, he returned to more concentrated work on visual art, and paintings from the 1930s and 1940s constitute some of his best-known work. The ''
Surrender of Barcelona'' (1936–37) makes a significant statement about the
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlism, Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebeli ...
. It was included in an exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in 1937 that Lewis hoped would re-establish his reputation as a painter. After the publication in ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' ( ...
'' of a letter of support for the exhibition, asking that something from the show be purchased for the national collection (signed by, among others,
Stephen Spender
Sir Stephen Harold Spender (28 February 1909 – 16 July 1995) was an English poet, novelist and essayist whose work concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by th ...
,
W. H. Auden,
Geoffrey Grigson,
Rebecca West
Dame Cicily Isabel Fairfield (21 December 1892 – 15 March 1983), known as Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, was a British author, journalist, literary critic and travel writer. An author who wrote in many genres, West reviewed books ...
,
Naomi Mitchison
Naomi Mary Margaret Mitchison, Baroness Mitchison (; 1 November 1897 – 11 January 1999) was a List of Scottish novelists, Scottish novelist and poet. Often called a doyenne of Scottish literature, she wrote over 90 books of historical and sci ...
,
Henry Moore
Henry Spencer Moore (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English artist. He is best known for his semi-abstract art, abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. As well as sculpture, Mo ...
and
Eric Gill
Arthur Eric Rowton Gill, (22 February 1882 – 17 November 1940) was an English sculptor, letter cutter, typeface designer, and printmaker. Although the '' Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' describes Gill as ″the greatest artist-cr ...
) the
Tate Gallery
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
bought the painting, ''Red Scene''. Like others from the exhibition, it shows an influence from
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to ...
and
de Chirico's
Metaphysical Painting
Metaphysical painting ( it, pittura metafisica) or metaphysical art was a style of painting developed by the Italian artists Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà. The movement began in 1910 with de Chirico, whose dreamlike works with sharp contra ...
. Lewis was highly critical of the ideology of Surrealism, but admired the visual qualities of some Surrealist art.
During this period, Lewis also produced many of his most well-known portraits, including pictures of
Edith Sitwell
Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell (7 September 1887 – 9 December 1964) was a British poet and critic and the eldest of the three literary Sitwells. She reacted badly to her eccentric, unloving parents and lived much of her life with her governess ...
(1923–1936),
T. S. Eliot (1938 and 1949), and
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...
(1939). His 1938 portrait of Eliot was rejected by the selection committee of the
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its pur ...
for their annual exhibition and caused a furore, when
Augustus John resigned in protest.
World War II and North America (1941–1945)
Lewis spent World War II in the United States and Canada. In 1941, in Toronto, he produced a series of watercolour fantasies centred on themes of creation, crucifixion and bathing.
He grew to appreciate the cosmopolitan and "rootless" nature of the American melting pot, declaring that the greatest advantage of being American was to have "turned one's back on race, caste, and all that pertains to the rooted state."
He praised the contributions of African-Americans to American culture, and regarded
Diego Rivera
Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez, known as Diego Rivera (; December 8, 1886 – November 24, 1957), was a prominent Mexican painter. His large frescoes helped establish the ...
,
David Alfaro Siqueiros
David Alfaro Siqueiros (born José de Jesús Alfaro Siqueiros; December 29, 1896 – January 6, 1974) was a Mexican social realist painter, best known for his large public murals using the latest in equipment, materials and technique. Along with ...
, and
José Clemente Orozco
José Clemente Orozco (November 23, 1883 – September 7, 1949) was a Mexican caricaturist and painter, who specialized in political murals that established the Mexican Mural Renaissance together with murals by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Si ...
as the "best North American artists," predicting that when "the Indian culture of Mexico melts into the great American mass to the North, the Indian will probably give it its art."
He returned to England in 1945.
Later life and blindness (1945–1951)
By 1951, he was completely blinded by a
pituitary tumor that placed pressure on his optic nerve. It ended his artistic career, but he continued writing until his death. He published several autobiographical and critical works: ''Rude Assignment'' (1950), ''Rotting Hill'' (1951), a collection of allegorical short stories about his life in "the capital of a dying empire"; ''The Writer and the Absolute'' (1952), a book of essays on writers including
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalit ...
,
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and lite ...
and
André Malraux
Georges André Malraux ( , ; 3 November 1901 – 23 November 1976) was a French novelist, art theorist, and Minister of Culture (France), minister of cultural affairs. Malraux's novel ''La Condition Humaine'' (Man's Fate) (1933) won the Prix Go ...
; and the semi-autobiographical novel ''Self Condemned'' (1954).
The
BBC commissioned Lewis to complete his 1928 work ''The Childermass'', which was published as ''The Human Age'' and dramatized for the
BBC Third Programme in 1955. In 1956, the
Tate Gallery
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
held a major exhibition of his work, "Wyndham Lewis and Vorticism", in the catalogue to which he declared that "Vorticism, in fact, was what I, personally, did and said at a certain period"—a statement which brought forth a series of "Vortex Pamphlets" from his fellow ''BLAST'' signatory
William Roberts.
Personal life
From 1918 to 1921, Lewis lived with
Iris Barry
Iris Barry (1895 – 22 December 1969) was a film critic and curator. In the 1920s she helped establish the original London Film Society, and was the first curator of the film department of the Museum of Modern Art, New York City in 1935.
Life
Ba ...
, with whom he had two children. He is said to have shown little affection for them.
In 1930, Lewis married Gladys Anne Hoskins (1900–1979), 18 years his junior and affectionately known as Froanna. They lived together for 10 years before marrying and never had children.
Lewis kept Froanna in the background, and many of his friends were unaware of her existence. It seems that Lewis was extraordinarily jealous and protective of his wife, owing to her youth and beauty. Froanna was patient and caring toward her husband through financial troubles and his frequent illnesses. She was the model for some of Lewis's more tender and intimate portraits as well as a number of characters in his fiction. In contrast to his earlier, impersonal portraits, which are purely concerned with external appearance, the portraits of Froanna show a preoccupation with her inner life.
![Percy Wyndham Lewis - Golders Green Crematorium](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Percy_Wyndham_Lewis_-_Golders_Green_Crematorium.jpg)
Always interested in Roman Catholicism, he never converted. He died in 1957 and was cremated at
Golders Green Crematorium
Golders Green Crematorium and Mausoleum was the first crematorium to be opened in London, and one of the oldest crematoria in Britain. The land for the crematorium was purchased in 1900, costing £6,000 (the equivalent of £135,987 in 2021), ...
. By the time of his death, Lewis had written 40 books in all.
Political views
In 1931, after a visit to Berlin, Lewis published ''Hitler'' (1931), a book presenting
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and the ...
as a "man of peace" whose party-members were threatened by communist street violence. His unpopularity among liberals and anti-fascists grew, especially after Hitler came to power in 1933. Following a second visit to Germany in 1937, Lewis changed his views and began to retract his previous political comments. He recognized the reality of Nazi treatment of Jews after a visit to Berlin in 1937. In 1939, he published an attack on anti-semitism titled ''The Jews, Are They Human?'', which was favourably reviewed in ''
The Jewish Chronicle
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...
''. He also published ''The Hitler Cult'' (1939), which firmly revoked his earlier support for Hitler.
Politically, Lewis remained an isolated figure through the 1930s. In ''Letter to Lord Byron'',
W. H. Auden called Lewis "that lonely old volcano of the Right." Lewis thought there was what he called a "left-wing orthodoxy" in Britain in the 1930s. He believed it was against Britain's self-interest to ally with the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
, "which the newspapers most of us read tell us has slaughtered out-of-hand, only a few years ago, millions of its better fed citizens, as well as its whole imperial family."
In ''Anglosaxony: A League that Works'' (1941), Lewis reflected on his earlier support for fascism:
Fascism – once I understood it – left me colder than communism. The latter at least pretended, at the start, to have something to do with helping the helpless and making the world a more decent and sensible place. It does start from the human being and his suffering. Whereas fascism glorifies bloodshed and preaches that man should model himself upon the wolf.
His sense that America and Canada lacked a British-type class structure had increased his opinion of liberal democracy, and in the same pamphlet, Lewis defends liberal democracy's respect for individual freedom against its critics on both the left and right.
In ''America and Cosmic Man'' (1949), Lewis argued that
Franklin Delano Roosevelt had successfully managed to reconcile individual rights with the demands of the state.
Legacy
In recent years, there has been renewed critical and biographical interest in Lewis and his work, and he is now regarded as a major British artist and writer of the twentieth century. Rugby School hosted an exhibition of his works in November 2007 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his death. The
National Portrait Gallery in London held a major retrospective of his portraits in 2008. Two years later, held at the Fundación Juan March (Madrid, Spain), a large exhibition (''Wyndham Lewis 1882–1957'') featured a comprehensive collection of Lewis's paintings and drawings. As Tom Lubbock pointed out, it was "the retrospective that Britain has never managed to get together.".
In 2010, Oxford World Classics published a critical edition of the 1928 text of ''Tarr'', edited by Scott W. Klein of
Wake Forest University
Wake Forest University is a private research university in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Founded in 1834, the university received its name from its original location in Wake Forest, north of Raleigh, North Carolina. The Reynolda Campus, the un ...
. The
Nasher Museum of Art
The Nasher Museum of Art (previously the Duke University Museum of Art) is the art museum of Duke University, and is located on Duke's campus in Durham, North Carolina, United States. The Nasher, along with Dartmouth's Hood Museum of Art and Pr ...
at
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...
held an exhibition entitled "
The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London and New York, 1914–18" from 30 September 2010 through 2 January 2011. The exhibition then travelled to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (29 January – 15 May 2011: "I Vorticisti: Artisti ribellia a Londra e New York, 1914–1918") and then to
Tate Britain
Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in ...
under the title "The Vorticists: Manifesto for a Modern World" between 14 June and 4 September 2011.
Several readings by Lewis are collected on ''The Enemy Speaks'', an audiobook CD published in 2007 and featuring extracts from "One Way Song" and ''The Apes of God'', as well as radio talks titled "When John Bull Laughs" (1938), "A Crisis of Thought" (1947) and "The Essential Purposes of Art" (1951).
A
blue plaque
A blue plaque is a permanent sign installed in a public place in the United Kingdom and elsewhere to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person, event, or former building on the site, serving as a historical marker. The term i ...
now stands on the house in
Kensington
Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in the West End of London, West of Central London.
The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up b ...
, London, where Lewis lived, No. 61 Palace Gardens Terrace.
Critical reception
In his essay "
Good Bad Books",
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalit ...
presents Lewis as the exemplary writer who is cerebral without being artistic. Orwell wrote, "Enough talent to set up dozens of ordinary writers has been poured into Wyndham Lewis's so-called novels… Yet it would be a very heavy labour to read one of these books right through. Some indefinable quality, a sort of literary vitamin, which exists even in a book like
">921 melodrama/nowiki> ''
If Winter Comes
''If Winter Comes'' is a 1947 drama film released by MGM. The movie was directed by Victor Saville and based on the 1921 novel by A.S.M. Hutchinson. The film tells the story of an English textbook writer who takes in a pregnant girl. The novel ...
'', is absent from them."
[Fifty Orwell Essays](_blank)
A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook
In 1932,
Walter Sickert
Walter Richard Sickert (31 May 1860 – 22 January 1942) was a German-born British painter and printmaker who was a member of the Camden Town Group of Post-Impressionist artists in early 20th-century London. He was an important influence on d ...
sent Lewis a telegram in which he said that Lewis's pencil portrait of
Rebecca West
Dame Cicily Isabel Fairfield (21 December 1892 – 15 March 1983), known as Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, was a British author, journalist, literary critic and travel writer. An author who wrote in many genres, West reviewed books ...
proved him to be "the greatest portraitist of this or any other time."
[Campbell, Peter (11 September 2008). "At the National Portrait Gallery". ''London Review of Books'', p. 12.]
Anti-semitism
For many years, Lewis's novels have been criticised for their satirical and hostile portrayals of Jews. ''Tarr'' was revised and republished in 1928, giving a new Jewish character a key role in making sure a duel is fought. This has been interpreted as an allegorical representation of
a supposed Zionist conspiracy against the West.
[Ayers, David. (1992) ''Wyndham Lewis and Western Man''. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan.] His literary satire ''The Apes of God'' has been interpreted similarly, because many of the characters are Jewish, including the modernist author and editor Julius Ratner, a portrait which blends anti-semitic stereotype with historical literary figures
John Rodker
John Rodker (18 December 1894 – 6 October 1955) was an English writer, modernist poet, and publisher of modernist writers.
Biography
John Rodker was born on 18 December 1894 in Manchester, into a Jewish immigrant family. The family moved t ...
and James Joyce.
A key feature of these interpretations is that Lewis is held to have kept his conspiracy theories hidden and marginalized. Since the publication of Anthony Julius's ''T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form'' (1995), where Lewis's anti-semitism is described as "essentially trivial", this view is no longer taken seriously.
Books
*''
Tarr
''Tarr'' is a modernist novel by Wyndham Lewis, written in 1909–11, revised and expanded in 1914–15 and first serialized in the magazine ''The Egoist
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already ...
'' (1918) (novel)
*''The Caliph's Design : Architects! Where is Your Vortex?'' (1919) (essay)
*''The Art of Being Ruled'' (1926) (essays)
*''
The Wild Body: A Soldier of Humour And Other Stories'' (1927) (short stories)
*''The Lion and the Fox: The Role of the Hero in the Plays of Shakespeare'' (1927) (essays)
*''Time and Western Man'' (1927) (essays)
*''The Childermass'' (1928) (novel)
*''Paleface: The Philosophy of the Melting Pot'' (1929) (essays)
*''Satire and Fiction'' (1930) (criticism)
*''
The Apes of God
''The Apes of God'' is a 1930 novel by the British artist and writer Wyndham Lewis. It is a satire of London's contemporary literary and artistic scene. The Sitwells, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury group ar ...
'' (1930) (novel)
*
Hitler' (1931) (essay)
*''The Diabolical Principle and the Dithyrambic Spectator'' (1931) (essays)
*''Doom of Youth'' (1932) (essays)
*''Filibusters in Barbary'' (1932) (travel; later republished as ''Journey into Barbary'')
*''
Enemy of the Stars'' (1932) (play)
*''Snooty Baronet'' (1932) (novel)
*''One-Way Song'' (1933) (poetry)
*''Men Without Art'' (1934) (criticism)
*''Left Wings over Europe; or, How to Make a War about Nothing'' (1936) (essays)
*''
Blasting and Bombardiering'' (1937) (autobiography)
*''The Revenge for Love'' (1937) (novel)
*''Count Your Dead: They are Alive!: Or, A New War in the Making'' (1937) (essays)
*''The Mysterious Mr. Bull'' (1938)
*''
The Jews, Are They Human?'' (1939) (essay)
*''
The Hitler Cult and How it Will End'' (1939) (essay)
*''America, I Presume'' (1940) (travel)
*''The Vulgar Streak'' (1941) (novel)
*''Anglosaxony: A League that Works'' (1941) (essay)
*''America and Cosmic Man'' (1949) (essay)
*''Rude Assignment'' (1950) (autobiography)
*''Rotting Hill'' (1951) (short stories)
*''The Writer and the Absolute'' (1952) (essay)
*''Self Condemned'' (1954) (novel)
*''The Demon of Progress in the Arts'' (1955) (essay)
*''Monstre Gai'' (1955) (novel)
*''Malign Fiesta'' (1955) (novel)
*''The Red Priest'' (1956) (novel)
*''The Letters of Wyndham Lewis'' (1963) (letters)
*''The Roaring Queen'' (1973; written 1936 but unpublished) (novel)
*''Unlucky for Pringle'' (1973) (short stories)
*''Mrs Duke's Million'' (1977; written 1908–10 but unpublished) (novel)
*''Creatures of Habit and Creatures of Change'' (1989) (essays)
Paintings
![Wyndham Lewis-A Canadian Gun-pit](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Wyndham_Lewis-A_Canadian_Gun-pit.jpg)
*''The Theatre Manager'' (1909), watercolour
*''The Courtesan'' (1912), pen and ink, watercolour
*''Indian Dance'' (1912), chalk and watercolour
*''Russian Madonna'' (also known as ''Russian Scene'') (1912), pen and ink, watercolour
*''Lovers'' (1912), pen and ink, watercolour
*''Mother and Child'' (1912), oil on canvas, now lost
*''The Dancers'' (study for ''Kermesse'') (1912), black ink and watercolour
(image
*''Composition'' (1913), pen and ink, watercolour
(image
*''Plan of War'' (1913–14), oil on canvas
*''Slow Attack'' (1913–14), oil on canvas
*''New York'' (1914), pen and ink, watercolour
*''Argol'' (1914), pen and ink, watercolour
*''
The Crowd'' (1914–15), oil paint and graphite on canvas
(image
*''Workshop'' (1914–15), oil on canvas
(image
*''Vorticist Composition'' (1915), gouache and chalk
(image
*''A Canadian Gun-pit'' (1919), oil on canvas
(image
*''
A Battery Shelled
''A Battery Shelled'' is a 1919 painting by the English artist Wyndham Lewis. It depicts a scene from the Western Front of World War I. It was commissioned for the proposed Hall of Remembrance.
Description
A number of men are seen working and ...
'' (1919), oil on canvas
(image
*''Mr Wyndham Lewis as a Tyro'' (1920–21), oil on canvas
(image
*''A Reading of Ovid (Tyros)'' (1920–21), oil on canvas
(image
*''Seated Figure'' (c.1921
(image
*''Mrs Schiff'' (1923–24), oil on canvas
(image
*''
Edith Sitwell
Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell (7 September 1887 – 9 December 1964) was a British poet and critic and the eldest of the three literary Sitwells. She reacted badly to her eccentric, unloving parents and lived much of her life with her governess ...
'' (1923–1935), oil on canvas
(image
*''Bagdad'' (1927–28), oil on wood
(image
*''Three Veiled Figures'' (1933), oil on canvas
(image
*''Creation Myth'' (1933–1936, oil on canvas
(image
*''Red Scene'' (1933–1936), oil on canvas
(image
*''One of the Stations of the Dead'' (1933–1837), oil on canvas
(image
*''
The Surrender of Barcelona'' (1934–1937), oil on canvas
(image
*''Panel for the Safe of a Great Millionaire'' (1936–37), oil on canvas
(image
*''Newfoundland'' (1936–37), oil on canvas
(image
*''Pensive Head'' (1937), oil on canvas
(image
*''La Suerte'' (1938), oil on canvas
(image
*''John Macleod'' (1938), oil on canva
(image
*''
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...
'' (1939), oil on canvas
(image
*''Mrs R.J. Sainsbury (1940–41), oil on canvas
(image
*''A Canadian War Factory'' (1943), oil on canvas
(image
*''Nigel Tangye'' (1946), oil on canvas
(image
Notes and references
Further reading
* Ayers, David. (1992) ''Wyndham Lewis and Western Man''. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan.
* Chaney, Edward (1990) "Wyndham Lewis: The Modernist as Pioneering Anti-Modernist", ''
Modern Painters
''Modern Painters'' (1843–1860) is a five-volume work by the Victorian art critic, John Ruskin, begun when he was 24 years old based on material collected in Switzerland in 1842. Ruskin argues that recent painters emerging from the tradition of ...
'' (Autumn, 1990), III, no. 3, pp. 106–09.
* Edwards, Paul. (2000) ''Wyndham Lewis, Painter and Writer''. New Haven and London: Yale U P.
* Edwards, Paul and Humphreys, Richard. (2010) "Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)". Madrid: Fundación Juan March
* Gasiorek, Andrzej. (2004) ''Wyndham Lewis and Modernism
Wyndham Lewis and Modernism Tavistock: Northcote House.
* Gasiorek, Andrzej, Reeve-Tucker, Alice, and Waddell, Nathan. (2011)
Wyndham Lewis and the Cultures of Modernity'. Aldershot: Ashgate.
* Grigson, Geoffrey (1951) 'A Master of Our Time', London: Methuen.
* Hammer, Martin (1981) ''Out of the Vortex: Wyndham Lewis as Painter'', in ''
Cencrastus
''Cencrastus'' was a magazine devoted to Scottish and international literature, arts and affairs, founded after the Referendum of 1979 by students, mainly of Scottish literature at Edinburgh University, and with support from Cairns Craig, then a ...
'' No. 5, Summer 1981, pp. 31–33, .
* Jaillant, Lise.
Rewriting Tarr Ten Years Later: Wyndham Lewis, the Phoenix Library and the Domestication of Modernism" Journal of Wyndham Lewis Studies 5 (2014): 1–30.
* Jameson, Fredric. (1979) ''Fables of Aggression: Wyndham Lewis, the Modernist as Fascist''. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.
* Kenner, Hugh. (1954) ''Wyndham Lewis''. New York: New Directions.
* Klein, Scott W. (1994) ''The Fictions of James Joyce and Wyndham Lewis: Monsters of Nature and Design.'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
* Leavis, F.R. (1964)
"Mr. Eliot, Mr. Wyndham Lewis and Lawrence."In ''The Common Pursuit'', New York University Press.
* Michel, Walter. (1971) ''Wyndham Lewis: Paintings and Drawings''. Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Meyers, Jeffrey. (1980) ''The Enemy: A Biography of Wyndham Lewis.'' London and Henley: Routledge & Keegan Paul.
* Morrow, Bradford and Bernard Lafourcade. (1978) ''A Bibliography of the Writings of Wyndham Lewis''. Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press.
* Normand, Tom. (1993) ''Wyndham Lewis the Artist: Holding the Mirror up to Politics''. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.
* O'Keeffe, Paul. (2000) ''Some Sort of Genius: A Biography of Wyndham Lewis''. London: Cape.
* Orage, A. R. (1922)
"Mr. Pound and Mr. Lewis in Public."In ''Readers and Writers (1917–1921)'', London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd.
* Rothenstein, John (1956)
"Wyndham Lewis."In ''Modern English Painters. Lewis To Moore'', London: Eyre & Spottiswoode.
* Rutter, Frank (1922)
"Wyndham Lewis."In ''Some Contemporary Artists'', London: Leonard Parsons.
* Rutter, Frank (1926)
''Evolution in Modern Art: A Study of Modern Painting, 1870–1925'' London: George G. Harrap.
* Schenker, Daniel. (1992) ''Wyndham Lewis: Religion and Modernism''. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama Press.
* Spender, Stephen (1978). ''The Thirties and After: Poetry, Politics, People (1933–1975)'', Macmillan.
* Stevenson, Randall (1982), ''The Other Centenary: Wyndham Lewis, 1882–1982'', in Hearn, Sheila G. (ed.), ''
Cencrastus
''Cencrastus'' was a magazine devoted to Scottish and international literature, arts and affairs, founded after the Referendum of 1979 by students, mainly of Scottish literature at Edinburgh University, and with support from Cairns Craig, then a ...
'' No. 10, Autumn 1982, pp. 18–21,
* Waddell, Nathan. (2012)
Modernist Nowheres: Politics and Utopia in Early Modernist Writing, 1900–1920'. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
* Wagner, Geoffrey (1957)
''Wyndham Lewis: A Portrait of the Artist as the Enemy'' New Haven: Yale University Press.
* Woodcock, George, ed. ''Wyndham Lewis in Canada''. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Publications, 1972.
External links
Website of the Wyndham Lewis SocietyBiography of Wyndham Lewis at Encyclopaedia Britannica"Self Condemned," essay about Lewis and Canada in The Walrus, October 2010*
ttps://web.archive.org/web/20100706171518/http://modernism.research.yale.edu/wiki/index.php/Time_and_Western_Man "Time and Western Man" essay from Yale*
*
Wyndham Lewis Collection at the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library*
Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, London.Wyndham Lewis's Art Collectionat th
Harry Ransom Centerat
The University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...
Wyndham Lewis collectionat University of Victoria, Special Collections
Art and Literary Works by Wyndham Lewis from the C. J. Fox Collectionat University of Victoria, Special Collections
an
a
Clara Thomas Archives & Special Collectionsat York University
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lewis, Wyndham
1882 births
1957 deaths
People born at sea
20th-century English painters
English male painters
20th-century English novelists
English satirists
Vorticists
British war artists
Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art
Royal Artillery officers
British Army personnel of World War I
Blind people from England
People educated at Rugby School
English magazine editors
Artists from Nova Scotia
Post-impressionist painters
Golders Green Crematorium
World War I artists
English male novelists
20th-century English male writers
Group X
English people of American descent