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Notes
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Mediterranean fishing schooners are shown in the outer port of Marseilles. The three boats in the foreground have been painted with formalistic clarity and precision, demonstrating an awareness of form and shape characteristic of contemporary innovative European artistic practice of the period. The repetition of simplified lines on the boats and rigging produces a harmonious and classic design. The lack of human presence and the appearance of the limp sails creates an eerie, dreamlike and surreal atmosphere. The artist has used a subtle range of soft and shimmering colours to convey the peculiar qualities of Mediterranean light. The atmosphere evoked has much to do with his increasing obsession with the technical quality of his painting method, using the medium of tempera.
Wadsworth was a pioneer of abstract painting and, as a founder of the Vorticist movement, was among the first British artists experimenting with Cubist principles. He used Cubo-Futurism as a basis for developing an art that was geometrical to the point of abstraction. During the war he served as an intelligence officer in the Navy and was invalided out in 1917. He returned to England to work on a scheme of dazzle-camouflage for ships and was able to rely on his artistic experience to vary the zigzag patterns, which were intended to mislead enemy lookouts. During the 1920s he returned to a more representational painting style and pioneered the revival of tempera, a method which employs egg to bind powdered pigments together and which creates a highly opaque and permanent finish.
Title
L'Avant Port, Marseilles
Date
1924
Medium
egg tempera on canvas on panel
Measurements
H 63.6 x W 88.9 cm
Accession number
BHC4152
Work type
Painting