Saturday, December 30, 2017

Paintings of Domestic Life in the Nineteen Thirties

Mary Potter
Golden Kipper
1939
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Marie Louise von Motesiczky
Still Life with Sheep
1938
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

William Nicholson
Silver
1938
oil on panel
Tate Gallery

OLD BOOKS

Sappho's dark hyacinth,
Prospero with his rod,
Achilles in his tent,
Saint Francis praising God:

Hold fast, hold fast to these,
The sturdy and the few
That are more lovely than your love,
More actual than you.

– Lindley Williams Hubbell (1938)

Claude Rogers
Mrs Richard Chilver
1937-38
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Glyn Philpot
Mrs Gerard Simpson
1937
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

James Ensor
Effect of Light
1935
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

from AN ELEGY FOR D.H. LAWRENCE

Greep, greep, greep the cricket
chants where the snake
with agate eyes leaned to the water.
Sorrow to the young
that Lawrence has passed
unwanted from England.
And in the gardens forsythia
and in the woods
now the crinkled spice-bush
in flower.

– William Carlos Williams (1935)

Eliot Hodgkin
October
1935
oil on panel
Tate Gallery

Henry Lamb
The Artist's Wife
1933
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

from APOLLO AT DELPHI

Now I know
there is no before
nor after,
that all escape lies in the perfect contour . . .

– H.D. (1933)

Tristram Hillier
Composition 1933 (Interior)
1933
oil on panel
Tate Gallery

William Ratcliffe
The Artist's Room, Letchworth
ca. 1932
oil on paper
Tate Gallery

Ivon Hitchens
Autumn Composition - Flowers on a Table
1932
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Vanessa Bell
Pheasants
1931
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

HUSK

Here is the husk of my thoughts, as brittle
As last year's sheaves, meaning as little
As long dried nut-shells stripped of the kernel
Or yesterday's promises of the eternal.

Here is the crisp word, whose dust will linger
After you crush it between thumb and finger.
Here is a funeral – light slender taper
And watch by the corpse inscribed on my paper.

– Frances Jennings (1931)

Dod Procter
Kitchen at Myrtle Cottage
ca. 1930-35
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Walter Russell
Cordelia
ca. 1930
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Poems from the archives of Poetry (Chicago)