Friday, December 29, 2017

Painted Portraits - Nineteen Twenties (Tate)

Simon Bussy
Portrait of Lady Ottoline Morrell
ca. 1920
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

from POEMS BY A CHILD

I know how poems come;
They have wings.
When you are not thinking of it
I suddenly say,
"Mother, a poem!"
Somehow I hear it
Rustling.

– Hilda Conkling (1920 – written and published at the age of 10)

Philip Wilson Steer
Mrs Raynes
1922
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

CLOUDY-PANSY

Wandering down a dusty road,
I met a gypsy.
She might have dropped out of the trees.
She had a green kerchief
And a blue velvet skirt,
A lavender cape
And a gold locket:
Green shoes on her feet
That trod the powdery road
To the marble-floored Vermont river
Thinking as it goes along.

– Hilda Conkling (1922 – written and published at the age of 12)

Hilda Carline
Self Portrait
1923
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

FLOWERS FADED AND GONE
                                A Bowl of Calendula Flowers

Their petals curl and shrivel,
They lean on the dark
They are like wet velvet.

              Now we must let them go . . .
              They are just leaving us.

Star-splashes of rain on velvet,
Crumpled fingers of tired hands.
They are a people I do not know
From another country:
What they are thinking is in my heart,
But without words.

Already they sigh under their stained gold
For the wind to scatter them.
Their look is blurred . . .
They wait for the wind.

– Hilda Conkling (1923 – written and published at the age of 13)

[Hilda Conkling's first poems were published at age 6  she stopped writing at 14]

Juan Gris
Pierrot with Book
1924
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Pablo Picasso
Head of a Woman
1924
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

William Roberts
Portrait of Esther Lahr
1925
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

ENDING

Heart of water,
    Heart of a stone,
All I ask is
    Leave me alone.

Heart of fire,
    Heart of flood,
Light not, quench not
    the flame in my blood.

All I dream
    Is a dreamless night.
Heart of sunset,
    Blow out the light.

– Florence Mayne Hickey (1925)

Walter Russell
The Amber Beads
ca. 1926
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Ambrose McEvoy
Mrs Claude Johnson
ca. 1926
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Giorgio de Chirico
The Painter's Family
1926
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

A MINSTREL FROM THE ISLAND OF THE MOON

He Sings of Beauty

            "An octagon woman with prismatic feet,
            Ears in coils, two saw-teeth,
            Came this morning with a rolling-pin,
            And rolled out the sky to a pink sheet.
            Strings of sunshine, tied to the sky,
            Bound white angels in fluffy veils
            To float and swing in the air.
            But the moon set fire to their golden hair,
            And they fell to earth, flaming torches,
            Quenched in the cold black sea."

– Ottys Sanders (1926)

Duncan Grant
Portrait of a Woman
1927
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Tate Gallery

Augustus John
Viscount d'Abernon
1927-32
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Meredith Frampton
Portrait of Marguerite Kelsey
1928
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Gilbert Spencer
Self Portrait
1928
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

NOTE

If earth would end
        When I died,
I could die
        Satisfied.

– Dorothy Emerson (1928)

Henry Tonks
Saturday Night in the Vale (George Moore reading aloud)
1928-29
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

John Lavery
The Chess Players
1929
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Poems from the archives of Poetry (Chicago)