Edward Wadsworth was a British painter and wood engraver. He created his tempera abstract paintings, coastal landscapes, marines, portraits and still-lifes often in Vorticism style.
Background
Edward Wadsworth was born on October 29, 1889 in Cleckheaton town, United Kingdom. He was a son of a prosperous textile industrialist and an owner of the firm E. Wadsworth & Sons. Wadsworth’s father wished his son to continue their family business.
Education
Edward Wadsworth began his studies at the Fettes College in Edinburgh, United Kingdom. In 1906, he was sent by his father for one year to Munich in order to learn German and engineering draughtsmanship. In his free time, Edward visited the Knirr Art School where he received his first knowledge in drawing, painting, woodcutting and printing. It was there where Wadsworth choose an artistic career.
To fulfill his goal, Edward pursued his artistic training at the Bradford School of Art and at the Slade School of Art in London which he entered in 1908. Edward Wadsworths’ contemporaries at the Slade School were Stanley Spencer, CRW Nevinson, Mark Gertler, Dora Carrington and David Bomberg. While four-year studying, the artist explored such new art movements as British post-impressionism, French Cubism, Italian Futurism and German Expressionism.
After graduation, Wadsworth became a pupil at the Roger Fry’s Omega workshops for a short period of time.
Edward Wadsworth’s career started from the participation in the 1911 exhibition organized by New English Art Club. This debut was followed a year later by the second Post-Impressionism Exhibition which took place at the Grafton Galleries in London.
On March, 1914, along with Wyndham Lewis, Wadsworth founded the Rebel Art Centre which main goal was to gather the artists for exchanging thoughts and revolutionary art ideas. In the summer of the same year, Wadsworth signed the Vorticist Manifesto created by the Coster Gang group which appeared in the Vorticist magazine Blast. Moreover, the work of Wassily Kandinsky caught the artist’s attention and he translated Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art into English. The translation was published in the Blast magazine.
After the meeting with Wyndham Lewis, the artist changed his style and began to create some futurist paintings presented at the Futurist Exhibitions in the Doré Gallery in 1915.
At the outbreak of the First World War, Edward Wadsworth participated at the Vorticist Exhibition on June 1915, and soon he joined the navy. While at War, the artist had served as an intelligence officer at the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve on the island of Mudros, Greece till 1917. Wadsworth painted the dazzle camouflage on allied ships and somehow continued his artistic activity creating some woodcut designs which later were cut and printed in England.
The war experience was reflected by the artist on the painting called Dazzle-ships in Drydock at Liverpool (1919).
After the War, Wadsworth had his first personal exhibition in 1920 which took place at the Leicester Galleries.
Till the end of his life, Edward Wadsworth created the paintings on nautical themes. Some of the late artist's creations became more surreal.
Quotations:
"Excuse me for harrowing you with this picture of war. But I am very full of it at present."
Membership
Royal Academy
,
United Kingdom
April 23, 1943
Unit One
,
United Kingdom
1933
New English Art Club
,
United Kingdom
1921
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
"They all had their own theories on how great art could be produced, with Maxwell Lightfoot and Edward Wadsworth amongst the most fervent in advancing their ideas and advising their peers." David Haycock, an author of A Crisis of Brilliance
Connections
Edward Wadsworth married Fanny Mary Eveleigh, a violinist.