Portraits by Wyndham Lewis

This morning I read about a 19th Century British painter (born in Canada) I'd never heard of who belonged to an art movement I'd never heard of. The article is in the Telegraph (UK), dated July 8, 2008. Although I don't care for his other pictures, I do think this artist's portraits are interesting, and so does the author of the article. It continually amazes me that there have been so many, many very good artists in the world -- I keep running across more of them that I didn't know about, (which is always fun; it makes my day). But I didn't really think there were any art movements that I hadn't heard at least a little about. Have you ever heard of Vorticism? Have you ever heard of Wyndham Lewis?

His full name was Percy Wyndham Lewis (1820-1868) but he didn't like the name "Percy."

He is described in the article and in the accompanying video (see below or on the Telegraph site) as a very despicable person (one self-portrait does make me suspect that the description is probably accurate), but with a talent for drawing and painting people. I myself don't see why we should base our judgment of pictures on the personality of the artist. But still, I think it's interesting to know what the artist is like -- not necessary, but interesting.

In the video some of his pictures in the National Portrait Gallery are shown and described.

VIDEO: Wyndham Lewis: a monster - and a master of portrait painting
TIME: Very short, just over a minute long



After you read the article and see the short video, be sure to click on the link to portraits by Wyndham Lewis (Wyndham Lewis at the National Portrait Gallery) - The link is above the video on that page.

You can find more of Wyndham's drawings and paintings via links on this Artcyclopedia page.