Edward Wadsworth

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Edward Alexander Wadsworth
Wadsworth in 1916
Born	29 October 1889
Died	21 June 1949 Bayswater, London
Nationality	English
Field	Painting
Movement	Vorticism

Edward Alexander Wadsworth (29 October 1889 – 21 June 1949) was an English artist, most famous for his close association with Vorticism. He painted, often in tempera, coastal views, abstracts, portraits and still-life. He was also an engraver on wood and copper. In the First World War he designed dazzle camouflage for the Royal Navy, and after the war he continued to paint nautical themes.

Abstract Composition, 1915 Tate Gallery.

Early life and study

Wadsworth was born on 29 October 1889 in Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire, and was educated at Fettes College in Edinburgh.^[1] He studied engineering in Munich between 1906-7, where he studied art in his spare time at the Knirr School. This provoked a change of course, as he attended Bradford School of Art before earning a scholarship to the Slade School of Art, London.^[2] His contemporaries at the school included Stanley Spencer, CRW Nevinson, Mark Gertler, Dora Carrington and David Bomberg.

Career

Wadsworth's work was included in Roger Fry's second Post-Impressionism Exhibition at the Grafton Galleries, 1912, in London, but he changed allegiance shortly after through friendship with Wyndham Lewis, and exhibited some futurist-derived paintings at the Futurist Exhibitions at the Doré Gallery. Although a member of the committee that organised a dinner in honour of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1913, he was one of a number of British painters in the nascent avant-garde that became increasingly disenchanted with the Italian's arrogance. By June of the following year, he was in a group of artists, including Lewis, who jeered Marinetti's public performance of The Battle Of Adrianople.^[3] He was a signatory of the Vorticist Manifesto published in BLAST the next month,^[4] and also supplied a review of Kandinsky's Concerning The Spiritual In Art and images to be reproduced in the magazine.^[5]

First World War

Dazzle-ships in Drydock at Liverpool, 1919, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

Thirty three days after the Vorticist Manifesto was published, war was declared on Germany. Vorticism managed to continue into 1915, with a Vorticist Exhibition, June 1915 at the Doré Gallery and a second edition of BLAST published to coincide with the show. Wadsworth contributed to both, but signed up for the navy shortly after. His fellow vorticists Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and T. E. Hulme were killed at the front; Bomberg and Lewis found that their belief in the purity of the machine age were seriously challenged by the realities in the trenches; Wadsworth spent the war in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve on the island of Mudros until invalided out in 1917, designing dazzle camouflage for allied ships.^[6]^[7] Known as Dazzle ships, these vessels were not camouflaged to become invisible, but instead used ideas derived from Vorticism and Cubism to confuse enemy U-boats trying to pinpoint the direction and speed of travel.^[8] Always a fan of modern ships, Wadsworth was to utilise nautical themes in his art for the rest of his career.

The Return To Order

Heralded by the major painting Dazzle Ships In Dry Dock, 1919, Wadsworth moved away from the avant-garde in the 1920s, and adopted a more realistic style. However, towards the end of his life his work became increasingly strange and surreal, although Wadsworth never had any formal links with the official Surrealist movement.

Gravestone, Brompton Cemetery, London

Later life

Wadsworth died in 1949, and is buried in Brompton Cemetery. The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University held an exhibition entitled The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London and New York, 1914-18 from September 30, 2010 through January 2, 2011 that included his work.^[9]

Influences

The graphic designer Peter Saville had seen Wadsworth's painting Dazzle Ships In Drydock At Liverpool and was struck by the image. After suggesting the idea and title to Andy McCluskey of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Saville carried the theme over to the sleeve design of their album Dazzle Ships (1983).

References

↑ Distinguished old Fettesians
↑ Essay on Wadsworth, Richard Cork, Oxford Art Online
↑ Breaking The Rules, Bury, British Library, p112
↑ Cooper, Philip. Cubism. London: Phaidon, 1995, p. 104. ISBN 0714832502
↑ Blast 1, Lewis et al., Bodley Head, 1914
↑ "Vorticism". Edward Wadsworth. Vorticism.co.uk. Retrieved August 01, 2012.
↑ Modernist Art in Camouflage
↑ Dazzle Painting
↑ Nasher Museum Retrieved September 17, 2010

External links

v t e Camoufleurs

1st World War	Lucien-Victor Guirand de Scévola Jean-Louis Forain Loyd A. Jones John Graham Kerr Paul Klee Franz Marc Alister Hardy André Mare Solomon Joseph Solomon Abbott Handerson Thayer Leon Underwood Edward Wadsworth Everett Warner Norman Wilkinson

2nd World War	Tony Ayrton Geoffrey Barkas Hugh Casson John Codner Edward Bainbridge Copnall Hugh B. Cott Frederick Gore Stanley William Hayter Ivan Konev Jasper Maskelyne Oliver Messel Roland Penrose Peter Proud Fred Pusey Brian Robb Peter Scott Edward Seago Alan Sorrell Basil Spence Steven Sykes Ernest Townsend Julian Trevelyan

Authority control	WorldCat VIAF: 30339282 LCCN: nr91006405 ISNI: 0000 0000 6676 2180 GND: 119095297 SUDOC: 091964075

Persondata
Name	Wadsworth, Edward
Alternative names
Short description	British painter and camoufleur
Date of birth	29 October 1889
Place of birth
Date of death	21 June 1949
Place of death

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