Humphrey Jennings, Edward Lear

Humphrey Jennings (1907-1950), Sketch for Portrait of Edward Lear.
Signed with initials, inscribed and dated ‘H.J. 1948 Sketch for portrait of/Edward Lear’ (on the canvas overlap) and with studio stamp (on the canvas overlap). Oil on canvas, 14 x 12 in. (35.5 x 30.5 cm.)

Sold at Christie’s, 22 June 2010 (London, South Kensington).

Jennings’ studies for Edward Lear are remarkable in the way they show how vision, and creation, develop from figurativeness to a kind of “lyrical abstraction”, from the contours of a figure to the revelation of its interior forces. They, again, demonstrate Jennings’s process of de-realization of the real towards a kind of essence of the object under study.