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拍品专文
Peter Watson (1908-1956) was born into great wealth. His father died when he was 21 and Watson acquired an enormous trust fund, the income from which enabled him to lead a life unrestricted by the concerns of normal people. He never had a job and, with no wife, children, house, servants, estates or any of the other encumbrances of a rich man of the time, his money was all his own to spend how he liked.
Gradually, after a frivolous start to the 1930s, he began to collect art. With sophisticated friends like Cecil Beaton and Oliver Messel in England, and with bases in London and Paris, he gradually became a well-known name in the contemporary art world. At some point he got to know Picasso and Giacometti in Paris and in London he knew everyone from Roland Penrose and Herbert Read, with whom he co-founded the ICA in 1946, to artists such as Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland and John Piper. Watson's life, as for many other people, changed dramatically in September 1939. He rushed back from Paris, where he had spent long periods at his flat in the Rue du Bac, to London shortly after the War began. He sent his largest Picasso (the Femme Lisant of 1934, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and shown at the Picasso and Modern British Art exhibition at Tate Britain in 2012) to America for safekeeping with his current boyfriend, Denny Fouts, and began to look for somewhere to live in London on what looked as if it might have to be a more permanent basis than he was used to.
One of the most chic, modern places a man could live in London at this time was the new block of flats at 10 Palace Gate in Kensington. This had recently been designed by the architect, Wells Coates, in a modern, minimalist style. Watson moved into a tiny one-bedroomed flat there in either 1940 or 1941. In the meantime, in October 1939, he had been approached by Cyril Connolly at a party at Elizabeth Bowen's house in Regent's Park to help create a new cultural magazine. Watson was wary of Connolly's legendary laziness; he had rejected the suggestion previously and, before the War, had been looking at the possibility of backing his American friends, Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler, in their attempt to set up a new Surrealist magazine (which came out as View in 1941). Now, stuck in England for the duration, he succumbed to Connolly, signed a printing contract and Horizon was born.
Watson, as proprietor and art editor of Horizon, enjoyed exercising the patronage which came with it. He was able to ensure that the young English artists, whose work he was now properly exposed to for the first time, got more publicity. So there were reproductions in Horizon of work by Lucian Freud, John Craxton, Robert Colquhoun, Robert MacBryde, Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland, Francis Bacon and so on.
The flat in Palace Gate became a mecca for the contemporary British art scene. We know this from various accounts of people who went there. John Craxton often spoke of this; Keith Vaughan described it in his Journals; the poet, David Gascoyne, mentioned it, as did the painter, Robert MacBryde, in letters back to his old tutor in Scotland, Ian Fleming. All the accounts are consistent: the flat was a cultural oasis. Young artists found support, money, gifts, Modern French art magazines otherwise unavailable in London, and modern art on the walls - MacBryde noted in 1941 "two excellent Chris Woods … one of Ben Nicholson's latest landscapes, a good Max Ernst, a good Henry Moore, a J. Tunnard, a Joan Miró, a Graham Sutherland, a [John] Maxwe ... a bronze head by Renoir, a Duncan Grant, a good Soutine". There were very few, if any, places in London where such things could be found. In the meantime, a vast selection of modern European art had been seized by the Germans from Watson's Paris flat: 20 pictures went, including works by Klee, Picasso, Gris, Miró, Ernst and Tanguy.
Placing the moment at which the young John Craxton and Lucian Freud met Watson is inevitably a little imprecise. In the case of Freud, Watson had been paying some of his expenses at Cedric Morris' art school in Suffolk. Freud painted or drew Watson a number of times. At the 2012 show of Freud portraits at the National Portrait Gallery in London the earliest picture, an oil of 1941, had a prominent place. A well-developed drawing from 1945 is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum and now the present drawing has emerged, dating from 1942, from the collection of John Craxton. From 1942-1944 Watson paid the rent on studios for Freud and Craxton (at about £40 p/a) at 14 Abercorn Place in St John's Wood.
(Adrian Clark, private correspondence, 2 May 2014)
A biography of Peter Watson by Adrian Clark and Jeremy Dronfield will be published by John Blake Publishing in 2015.
It is that existential quality, the searing intensity of the artist's scrutiny that makes Portrait of Peter Watson such a vivid and evocative work. Peter’s features have been picked out with incredible attention to detail, often resulting in areas of cross hatching that perfectly capture the sense of shade and form. Freud's virtuosity as an artist is clear from the incredible precise handling of his pen in this composition. The subject's eye is large, fixing the viewer, engaging us directly, even imploringly, adding an incredible sense of intensity to the image of Peter Watson.
Freud drew obsessively until the early 1950s, seeing it as an independent activity, and much more than just a preparatory stage for painting. He was scrupulous about detail, and, regardless of medium, he was preoccupied by capturing differences in texture and exploring the impact of dramatic lighting. There is closeness in this work with Freud’s sensational portrait of the artist Gerald Wilde from the same year; it has the same penetrating and psychological scrutiny. An earlier oil of Peter Watson exists from 1941; here Freud subscribes to a German aesthetic of disharmony and emulates the early influence of Otto Dix.
Freud later described how disciplined he was with himself at this early point in his career. 'I would work on a part (of a work) until I got it how I thought it should be and then move to another part. I didn't go over the same area very often. I did it until I got it right. I was afraid that if I didn't pay very strict attention to every one of the things that attracted my eye the whole painting would fall apart. I was learning to see and I didn't want to be lazy about it.' (L. Freud quoted in S. Howgate, M. Auping & J. Richardson, Lucian Freud Portraits, London, 2012).
Gradually, after a frivolous start to the 1930s, he began to collect art. With sophisticated friends like Cecil Beaton and Oliver Messel in England, and with bases in London and Paris, he gradually became a well-known name in the contemporary art world. At some point he got to know Picasso and Giacometti in Paris and in London he knew everyone from Roland Penrose and Herbert Read, with whom he co-founded the ICA in 1946, to artists such as Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland and John Piper. Watson's life, as for many other people, changed dramatically in September 1939. He rushed back from Paris, where he had spent long periods at his flat in the Rue du Bac, to London shortly after the War began. He sent his largest Picasso (the Femme Lisant of 1934, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and shown at the Picasso and Modern British Art exhibition at Tate Britain in 2012) to America for safekeeping with his current boyfriend, Denny Fouts, and began to look for somewhere to live in London on what looked as if it might have to be a more permanent basis than he was used to.
One of the most chic, modern places a man could live in London at this time was the new block of flats at 10 Palace Gate in Kensington. This had recently been designed by the architect, Wells Coates, in a modern, minimalist style. Watson moved into a tiny one-bedroomed flat there in either 1940 or 1941. In the meantime, in October 1939, he had been approached by Cyril Connolly at a party at Elizabeth Bowen's house in Regent's Park to help create a new cultural magazine. Watson was wary of Connolly's legendary laziness; he had rejected the suggestion previously and, before the War, had been looking at the possibility of backing his American friends, Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler, in their attempt to set up a new Surrealist magazine (which came out as View in 1941). Now, stuck in England for the duration, he succumbed to Connolly, signed a printing contract and Horizon was born.
Watson, as proprietor and art editor of Horizon, enjoyed exercising the patronage which came with it. He was able to ensure that the young English artists, whose work he was now properly exposed to for the first time, got more publicity. So there were reproductions in Horizon of work by Lucian Freud, John Craxton, Robert Colquhoun, Robert MacBryde, Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland, Francis Bacon and so on.
The flat in Palace Gate became a mecca for the contemporary British art scene. We know this from various accounts of people who went there. John Craxton often spoke of this; Keith Vaughan described it in his Journals; the poet, David Gascoyne, mentioned it, as did the painter, Robert MacBryde, in letters back to his old tutor in Scotland, Ian Fleming. All the accounts are consistent: the flat was a cultural oasis. Young artists found support, money, gifts, Modern French art magazines otherwise unavailable in London, and modern art on the walls - MacBryde noted in 1941 "two excellent Chris Woods … one of Ben Nicholson's latest landscapes, a good Max Ernst, a good Henry Moore, a J. Tunnard, a Joan Miró, a Graham Sutherland, a [John] Maxwe ... a bronze head by Renoir, a Duncan Grant, a good Soutine". There were very few, if any, places in London where such things could be found. In the meantime, a vast selection of modern European art had been seized by the Germans from Watson's Paris flat: 20 pictures went, including works by Klee, Picasso, Gris, Miró, Ernst and Tanguy.
Placing the moment at which the young John Craxton and Lucian Freud met Watson is inevitably a little imprecise. In the case of Freud, Watson had been paying some of his expenses at Cedric Morris' art school in Suffolk. Freud painted or drew Watson a number of times. At the 2012 show of Freud portraits at the National Portrait Gallery in London the earliest picture, an oil of 1941, had a prominent place. A well-developed drawing from 1945 is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum and now the present drawing has emerged, dating from 1942, from the collection of John Craxton. From 1942-1944 Watson paid the rent on studios for Freud and Craxton (at about £40 p/a) at 14 Abercorn Place in St John's Wood.
(Adrian Clark, private correspondence, 2 May 2014)
A biography of Peter Watson by Adrian Clark and Jeremy Dronfield will be published by John Blake Publishing in 2015.
It is that existential quality, the searing intensity of the artist's scrutiny that makes Portrait of Peter Watson such a vivid and evocative work. Peter’s features have been picked out with incredible attention to detail, often resulting in areas of cross hatching that perfectly capture the sense of shade and form. Freud's virtuosity as an artist is clear from the incredible precise handling of his pen in this composition. The subject's eye is large, fixing the viewer, engaging us directly, even imploringly, adding an incredible sense of intensity to the image of Peter Watson.
Freud drew obsessively until the early 1950s, seeing it as an independent activity, and much more than just a preparatory stage for painting. He was scrupulous about detail, and, regardless of medium, he was preoccupied by capturing differences in texture and exploring the impact of dramatic lighting. There is closeness in this work with Freud’s sensational portrait of the artist Gerald Wilde from the same year; it has the same penetrating and psychological scrutiny. An earlier oil of Peter Watson exists from 1941; here Freud subscribes to a German aesthetic of disharmony and emulates the early influence of Otto Dix.
Freud later described how disciplined he was with himself at this early point in his career. 'I would work on a part (of a work) until I got it how I thought it should be and then move to another part. I didn't go over the same area very often. I did it until I got it right. I was afraid that if I didn't pay very strict attention to every one of the things that attracted my eye the whole painting would fall apart. I was learning to see and I didn't want to be lazy about it.' (L. Freud quoted in S. Howgate, M. Auping & J. Richardson, Lucian Freud Portraits, London, 2012).