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Glyn Philpot (1884–1937)
Venus and Cupid 1935 Oil on canvas, 155 x 128.2 cm Signed lower right ‘GP’ PROVENANCE: Purchased from the artist’s family; Private Collection. EXHIBITED Leicester Galleries, London, 1935 (126); Glyn Philpot R.A., 1884-1937, Brighton Art Gallery, April-May 1953 (31); Glyn Philpot: An Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings, Worthing Art Gallery, September-October 1962 (35); Glyn Philpot 1884-1937: Edwardian Aesthete to Thirties Modernist, National Portrait Gallery, London, November 1983-February 1984 (60, repr.); Glyn Philpot: Flesh and Spirit, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, May-October 2022 (88 repr.). LITERATURE Daisy Philpot, Catalogue of paintings by Glyn Philpot, c.1938-57, p.21; A.C. Sewter, Glyn Philpot 1884-1937, London, 1955, p.9, col. pl.7. Painted just two years before the artist's untimely death, Venus and Cupid belongs to the remarkable final phase of Glyn Philpot's career, when he abandoned the polished naturalism that had established him as one of Britain's most successful portrait painters and embarked upon a bold exploration of simplified form, expressive line and decorative design. Long recognised as one of the masterpieces of his maturity, the painting has featured in every major exhibition devoted to the artist since his death. Although inspired by a classical theme, Philpot's treatment is strikingly unconventional. Venus and Cupid emerge as elongated, sculptural presences inhabiting an ambiguous, dream-like landscape. The composition is built from broad passages of resonant colour, dominated by glowing reds, terracottas and crimsons against which the pale forms of the figures appear almost luminous. Decorative rhythms of drapery, architecture and landscape bind the composition together, creating an image that feels simultaneously ancient and modern, timeless yet unmistakably of the 1930s. The painting exemplifies Philpot's engagement with a wide range of artistic sources during his final decade. The monumental calm of the figures recalls the frescoes of Piero della Francesca, while elements of Renaissance painting, classical sculpture and early Italian art are fused with a distinctly modern concern for abstraction and design. Philpot was also working within a broader European revival of classical subject matter during the inter-war years, exemplified by the great neo-classical paintings Picasso produced in Paris during the 1920s. Yet rather than reviving antiquity for its own sake, Philpot sought what he described as the 'essential' character of his subject, reducing forms to their most expressive and enduring elements. The result is a work of extraordinary stillness and psychological intensity. Neither wholly classical nor fully modernist, Venus and Cupid occupies a unique position within twentieth-century British painting, demonstrating Philpot's determination to reinvent himself as an artist at the height of his powers. Monumental in scale and ambitious in conception, it stands among the defining achievements of his final years and among the most original contributions to British art of the inter-war period. SOLD |