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拍品專文
We are grateful to Dr. Salomon Grimberg for his assistance cataloguing this work.
The present lot is an extremely rare example of the artist’s paintings dating from 1935-36 when Carrington was attending art schools in London, first the Chelsea School of Art and then the Ozenfant Academy. These works are fascinating for what they can tell us about the artist’s early interests, as well as the development of her style. Still Life with Creature displays an interesting selection of objects—odd things brought incongruously together and displayed on a carpet. Significantly the center of the composition holds a leather-bound book, foregrounding her dual love of the visual and written arts, lifelong pursuits. A silver chalice with top, half an orange, and an unidentified fruit surround the book, while to the left a quasi-indistinguishable black shape, with prolonged scrutiny, appears to have a bird’s profile (a stuffed hen?). In the lower right is a crowned brass figurine, kneeling with arms spread as if welcoming us to view the work. This amusing and grotesque piece of Victorian bric-a-brac is reminiscent of the little goblins and fanciful creatures found in her boarding school sketchbooks and in a series of watercolors she did in 1933 titled Sisters of the Moon. Equally, it foretells the many fantastical characters that will parade through a lifetime of her artwork with an enigmatic yet comical sense of determination.
Text excerpted and edited from Susan L. Aberth, “The Crock of Gold: Leonora Carrington and the Victor Wynd Collection,” in Leonora Carrington in the Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art and Natural History, exh. cat. (Leeds, United Kingdom, Leeds College of Art, 2016), 7-8. Used by permission from the author.
The present lot is an extremely rare example of the artist’s paintings dating from 1935-36 when Carrington was attending art schools in London, first the Chelsea School of Art and then the Ozenfant Academy. These works are fascinating for what they can tell us about the artist’s early interests, as well as the development of her style. Still Life with Creature displays an interesting selection of objects—odd things brought incongruously together and displayed on a carpet. Significantly the center of the composition holds a leather-bound book, foregrounding her dual love of the visual and written arts, lifelong pursuits. A silver chalice with top, half an orange, and an unidentified fruit surround the book, while to the left a quasi-indistinguishable black shape, with prolonged scrutiny, appears to have a bird’s profile (a stuffed hen?). In the lower right is a crowned brass figurine, kneeling with arms spread as if welcoming us to view the work. This amusing and grotesque piece of Victorian bric-a-brac is reminiscent of the little goblins and fanciful creatures found in her boarding school sketchbooks and in a series of watercolors she did in 1933 titled Sisters of the Moon. Equally, it foretells the many fantastical characters that will parade through a lifetime of her artwork with an enigmatic yet comical sense of determination.
Text excerpted and edited from Susan L. Aberth, “The Crock of Gold: Leonora Carrington and the Victor Wynd Collection,” in Leonora Carrington in the Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art and Natural History, exh. cat. (Leeds, United Kingdom, Leeds College of Art, 2016), 7-8. Used by permission from the author.