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Lot Essay
“Souza is a painter with a powerful and strange personal vision. His paintings are neither primitive nor ‘cultured’. They either move you by their stark interpretation of the visual world, or they repel you [...] He is an image-maker and not an aesthete or a theorist. These are earth paintings, and their impact lies in the artist’s power to distort and strengthen the eye’s image of this world, and to produce an effect almost shocking in its intensity” (E. Mullins, Souza, London, 1962, p. 33).
Francis Newton Souza painted this striking portrait in 1961, having finally cemented his position within London's artistic circles. The 1960s in London represented a vibrant moment of exchange between likeminded artists and their contemporaries. Souza was, at this point, recognized as a member of the now renowned ‘London School’, and was totally immersed in the bohemian creative circles of hedonistic Soho. The present lot, the portrait of a king with an animalistic, disfigured head and jaundiced eyes, is a significant exemplar of a subject and format the artist frequently revisited in his work. Influenced by traditional African masks and art, Romanesque paintings, Catalonian frescos, and the works of artists ranging from El Greco to Picasso, the artist painted a series of male heads and torsos to convey his scathing commentary on the hypocrisy of the powerful and the orthodox.
“A crowned king, an emperor or an ex-emperor and the Pope were some of Souza's favoured images. They fitted in with his highly critical view of persons in power, especially those who attain their positions largely by virtue of heredity or convention and who thereafter impose their self-centered and retrogressive views on others. Here, the royal subject is recognisable only because of the large crown on his head. The eyes are large elliptical shapes going in different directions, implying that the facial features are largely irrelevant, as it is only the crown that counts” (A. Kurtha, Francis Newton Souza: Bridging Western and Indian Modern Art, Ahmedabad, 2006, p. 165).
Francis Newton Souza painted this striking portrait in 1961, having finally cemented his position within London's artistic circles. The 1960s in London represented a vibrant moment of exchange between likeminded artists and their contemporaries. Souza was, at this point, recognized as a member of the now renowned ‘London School’, and was totally immersed in the bohemian creative circles of hedonistic Soho. The present lot, the portrait of a king with an animalistic, disfigured head and jaundiced eyes, is a significant exemplar of a subject and format the artist frequently revisited in his work. Influenced by traditional African masks and art, Romanesque paintings, Catalonian frescos, and the works of artists ranging from El Greco to Picasso, the artist painted a series of male heads and torsos to convey his scathing commentary on the hypocrisy of the powerful and the orthodox.
“A crowned king, an emperor or an ex-emperor and the Pope were some of Souza's favoured images. They fitted in with his highly critical view of persons in power, especially those who attain their positions largely by virtue of heredity or convention and who thereafter impose their self-centered and retrogressive views on others. Here, the royal subject is recognisable only because of the large crown on his head. The eyes are large elliptical shapes going in different directions, implying that the facial features are largely irrelevant, as it is only the crown that counts” (A. Kurtha, Francis Newton Souza: Bridging Western and Indian Modern Art, Ahmedabad, 2006, p. 165).