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Lot Essay
Tomorrow Morning offers convincing proof that Wadsworth was unmatched as a painter of unsettling modernist tempera nautical-themed still life compositions. He had exhibited a series of tempera still lives at Tooth’s in May-June 1929, such as: Regalia, 1928 (Tate collection, London); North Sea, 1928 (Private Collection) and Wings of the Morning, 1928-29, (Private Collection) which attracted widespread praise and admiration. However, Tomorrow Morning stands out as a composition for the artist deciding to focus intently on a decidedly sinister piece of sea weed which dominates the foreground. A selection of marine-related objects, some depicted much larger than in actuality, occupy the rear portion of the composition. According to the gallerist and critic Léonce Rosenberg, writing in 1929, these objects existed as if in tense expectation of some creature emerging out of the sea, or that the ‘drowned’ piece of sea weed would suddenly display signs of life and advance menacingly down the jetty towards them. It is this tension between the sunny nostalgia associated with British seaside resorts and the hint of the macabre which at the time could be associated with burgeoning Film Noir that was coming into being in the mid-1940s, that places Tomorrow Morning among the finest tempera compositions Wadsworth produced during this period.
Wadsworth appears to have felt that the sea weed in the foreground, the treatment of the choppy sea and the pronounced wood grain of the jetty fencing required further work. He returned to work on Tomorrow Morning in 1942-44; poignantly this was a time when he had to live some distance from the coast, in Buxton, Derbyshire, as wartime internal security regulations had forced him to abruptly move in May 1940 from his home at Dairy House, Uckfield in East Sussex. In Buxton circa 1941-44, he focused on a series of temperas on paper illustrating the activities and products of Imperial Chemical Industries. For himself, at the same time, he also worked on a series of works featuring prominent pieces of rather surreal sea weed with collections of marine-themed objects on jetties and beaches such as: Quiet Outlook/Seaweed and Lighthouse, 1942 (Private Collection); The Silent Shore, 1943, (Private Collection) and Anticyclone, 1943 (Newport Art Gallery, Gwent).
In May 1943, Wadsworth was visited in Buxton by Graham Sutherland as he made one of his periodic yet unsuccessful attempts to attract the favour of Sutherland’s patron and Chairman of the War Artists Advisory Committee – Sir Kenneth Clark. Sutherland was, apparently, most impressed by The Silent Shore and Tomorrow Morning, particularly by the ‘life-like quality’ of the foreground sea weed which struck him as ‘sinisterly sentient’. Sutherland also approved of the accuracy with which Wadsworth depicted his lighthouses; in May 1944 Wadsworth included as a lantern slide an image of the original of the lighthouse used for Tomorrow Morning in a lecture he gave to the Institute of Civil Engineers on ‘the Aesthetic aspects of civil engineering’. A year later he was able to move back to Dairy House in East Sussex; he embarked on a series of brightly coloured temperas dominated by over life sized, hallucinatory real, artificial flowers while sea weed and lighthouses disappeared from his compositions to be replaced by playful octopi and echeloned set squares.
Dr Jonathan Black
We are very grateful to Dr Jonathan Black for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
Wadsworth appears to have felt that the sea weed in the foreground, the treatment of the choppy sea and the pronounced wood grain of the jetty fencing required further work. He returned to work on Tomorrow Morning in 1942-44; poignantly this was a time when he had to live some distance from the coast, in Buxton, Derbyshire, as wartime internal security regulations had forced him to abruptly move in May 1940 from his home at Dairy House, Uckfield in East Sussex. In Buxton circa 1941-44, he focused on a series of temperas on paper illustrating the activities and products of Imperial Chemical Industries. For himself, at the same time, he also worked on a series of works featuring prominent pieces of rather surreal sea weed with collections of marine-themed objects on jetties and beaches such as: Quiet Outlook/Seaweed and Lighthouse, 1942 (Private Collection); The Silent Shore, 1943, (Private Collection) and Anticyclone, 1943 (Newport Art Gallery, Gwent).
In May 1943, Wadsworth was visited in Buxton by Graham Sutherland as he made one of his periodic yet unsuccessful attempts to attract the favour of Sutherland’s patron and Chairman of the War Artists Advisory Committee – Sir Kenneth Clark. Sutherland was, apparently, most impressed by The Silent Shore and Tomorrow Morning, particularly by the ‘life-like quality’ of the foreground sea weed which struck him as ‘sinisterly sentient’. Sutherland also approved of the accuracy with which Wadsworth depicted his lighthouses; in May 1944 Wadsworth included as a lantern slide an image of the original of the lighthouse used for Tomorrow Morning in a lecture he gave to the Institute of Civil Engineers on ‘the Aesthetic aspects of civil engineering’. A year later he was able to move back to Dairy House in East Sussex; he embarked on a series of brightly coloured temperas dominated by over life sized, hallucinatory real, artificial flowers while sea weed and lighthouses disappeared from his compositions to be replaced by playful octopi and echeloned set squares.
Dr Jonathan Black
We are very grateful to Dr Jonathan Black for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.