Edward Wolfe 1897-1982
Song of Songs, 1928
watercolour, collage, mixed media
29 x 40 ins


Provenance
David Grob



Wolfe’s colourful and precocious artistic career began in 1917 when, still a student at the Slade, he was invited by Roger Fry to join the Omega Workshop, having his first exhibition there in the following year aged only 21. Born and brought up in South Africa, the brilliant light and colour that was always such a characteristic element of his work seems to owe much to this childhood experience and may have something to do also with his early (by English standards) and extremely sophisticated understanding of Matisse’s art. It is certainly very evident here in this unusual early work as is his intuitive feeling for the classical and sculptural; Gaudier-Brzeska had been a strong influence when he first arrived in England and he always much admired Modigliani while, between 1923-25, he had lived and worked in Rome and Florence. The fusion of colouristic and neo-classical elements that resulted make this vivid and experimental collage/watercolour unusual, to say the least, in the context of English painting of this period.