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Lot Essay
Francis Newton Souza painted Untitled (Citadel with Flag) in 1964 while living in London, during a period now seen as the apex of his career. By 1964, Souza had gained patronage and critical acclaim, and had established himself as a member of what is now referred to as the London School of painters, a prestigious group of artists including Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud who were the subject of Tate Britain’s All Too Human exhibition in 2018. Having enjoyed several successful shows at Gallery One, in 1964 Souza chose to hold his first exhibition with Grosvenor Gallery, which was met with success and followed by others over the next few years. This new collaboration marked an exciting period in the artist’s career, when he produced some of his most ambitious and impressive bodies of work. Ever the innovator, this was a time when Souza radically evolved his artistic process, particularly in terms of palette choices and the application of paint.
The present lot is a triumphant display of Souza’s mesmerizing skills as both a draughtsman and painter. Here, Souza reintroduces his iconic black line, quintessential to his most acclaimed works of the late 1950s. Taking on an almost schematic nature, the lines in Untitled (Citadel with Flag) are reminiscent of those seen in the depiction of Vitruvian Man by Leonardo. To reinforce their vital role in the construction of this landscape, these richly impastoed lines are juxtaposed against a thinly primed background, giving the large canvas a sculptural quality. The corniced buildings and pediments also suggest the Catholic architecture which informed much of Souza’s oeuvre, particularly his landscapes of the previous years. In fact, only a few years earlier, Souza was invited by the Italian government to spend several months in Rome on a scholarship, where he saw first-hand the architectural marvels of Vatican City and Castel Sant’Angelo as well as the Capitoline Hill, the once great citadel of Rome. In this impressive painting, Souza looks to have combined some of these architectural elements with those from his more familiar immediate surroundings of Belsize Park and Hampstead Heath in North London, where he lived and worked at the time.
The expansive citadel in this painting is placed on a horizon line that bisects the picture plane, seeming to rise up from a bed of thorny underbrush and menacing trees, and creating a dichotomy between the upper and lower sections of the canvas. The top, with its architectural structures defined by Souza’s controlled, sturdy lines is marked by a triumphant green flag and shining sun, while the bottom half represents the wild and uncontrolled element of nature that bristles with violence. The lattice-like outlines of the buildings and rooftops sharply overlay and contrast with the foreground, capturing the tension Souza saw between the man-made and natural worlds.
As such, this painting is like a blueprint for the uneasy opposition between mankind and nature that many of Souza’s works allude to. The human protagonist is, however, conspicuously absent in this citadel, usually a bastion of civilization. Souza’s use of black, not only for his line, but for parts of his subtly primed background as well, accentuates his plasticity of form and also anticipates his infamous ‘black on black’ paintings, which he would start work on only a few months later. The sun, a clear indication that this is not a nightscape, is also curiously rendered in black. Souza creates a dark world, almost post-apocalyptic in nature, where his citadel is a symbol of conflict and also the last stronghold for mankind and its resistance. The central flag atop the citadel, glimmering in green as it flutters in the wind, perhaps represents a beacon of hope for civilization, even in its darkest hour when all other lights seem to have been extinguished.
Fellow artist Jagdish Swaminathan describes Souza’s cityscapes as “singularly devoid of emotive inhibitions.” They are the “congealed visions of a mysterious world. Whether standing solidly in enamelled petrification or delineated in thin colour with calligraphic intonations, the cityscapes of Souza are purely plastic entities with no reference to memories or mirrors” (J. Swaminathan, ‘Souza's Exhibition’, Lalit Kala Contemporary 40, New Delhi, March 1995, p. 31).
The present lot is a triumphant display of Souza’s mesmerizing skills as both a draughtsman and painter. Here, Souza reintroduces his iconic black line, quintessential to his most acclaimed works of the late 1950s. Taking on an almost schematic nature, the lines in Untitled (Citadel with Flag) are reminiscent of those seen in the depiction of Vitruvian Man by Leonardo. To reinforce their vital role in the construction of this landscape, these richly impastoed lines are juxtaposed against a thinly primed background, giving the large canvas a sculptural quality. The corniced buildings and pediments also suggest the Catholic architecture which informed much of Souza’s oeuvre, particularly his landscapes of the previous years. In fact, only a few years earlier, Souza was invited by the Italian government to spend several months in Rome on a scholarship, where he saw first-hand the architectural marvels of Vatican City and Castel Sant’Angelo as well as the Capitoline Hill, the once great citadel of Rome. In this impressive painting, Souza looks to have combined some of these architectural elements with those from his more familiar immediate surroundings of Belsize Park and Hampstead Heath in North London, where he lived and worked at the time.
The expansive citadel in this painting is placed on a horizon line that bisects the picture plane, seeming to rise up from a bed of thorny underbrush and menacing trees, and creating a dichotomy between the upper and lower sections of the canvas. The top, with its architectural structures defined by Souza’s controlled, sturdy lines is marked by a triumphant green flag and shining sun, while the bottom half represents the wild and uncontrolled element of nature that bristles with violence. The lattice-like outlines of the buildings and rooftops sharply overlay and contrast with the foreground, capturing the tension Souza saw between the man-made and natural worlds.
As such, this painting is like a blueprint for the uneasy opposition between mankind and nature that many of Souza’s works allude to. The human protagonist is, however, conspicuously absent in this citadel, usually a bastion of civilization. Souza’s use of black, not only for his line, but for parts of his subtly primed background as well, accentuates his plasticity of form and also anticipates his infamous ‘black on black’ paintings, which he would start work on only a few months later. The sun, a clear indication that this is not a nightscape, is also curiously rendered in black. Souza creates a dark world, almost post-apocalyptic in nature, where his citadel is a symbol of conflict and also the last stronghold for mankind and its resistance. The central flag atop the citadel, glimmering in green as it flutters in the wind, perhaps represents a beacon of hope for civilization, even in its darkest hour when all other lights seem to have been extinguished.
Fellow artist Jagdish Swaminathan describes Souza’s cityscapes as “singularly devoid of emotive inhibitions.” They are the “congealed visions of a mysterious world. Whether standing solidly in enamelled petrification or delineated in thin colour with calligraphic intonations, the cityscapes of Souza are purely plastic entities with no reference to memories or mirrors” (J. Swaminathan, ‘Souza's Exhibition’, Lalit Kala Contemporary 40, New Delhi, March 1995, p. 31).