A lost masterpiece by a leading abstract artist of the early 20th century has been discovered beneath a portrait by a contemporary who may have painted over the original in a “fit of pique”.
Atlantic City by Helen Saunders, a member of the radical and short-lived vorticist movement, depicts a fragmented modern metropolis, almost certainly in the vibrant colours associated with the group. A black and white image of the painting appeared in Blast, the avant garde journal of the vorticists produced shortly before the outbreak of the first world war.
Almost all of Saunders’ vorticist paintings are thought to be lost, although drawings survive and will be exhibited at the Courtauld Gallery in London in October.
But an investigation of Praxitella, a portrait of the film critic Iris Barry by Wyndham Lewis, the founder of the vorticists, by two Courtauld students revealed it was almost certainly painted on top of Atlantic City.
Photograph: handout
Because of Praxitella’s uneven texture and glimpses of bright red through cracks in the surface paint, scholars had suspected that the 1921 portrait had been painted over another work.
The two students, Rebecca Chipkin and Helen Kohn, used X-ray and other imaging technology to investigate the painting. They found an abstract composition beneath the portrait that was eventually identified as the hitherto lost Atlantic City.
“We realised that when we turned the image of Atlantic City [in Blast] upside down, it had striking similarities with the composition seen in our X-ray of Praxitella,” Chipkin and Kohn said. “We were flabbergasted. It has taken 100 years to rediscover Atlantic City. It gives hope that there are other hidden vorticist paintings waiting to be found.”
Saunders was one of only two women to join the vorticists. “In the prewar years, she was one of the most radical painters and draughtspeople around. There were only a handful of people in Europe producing that type of hard-edged abstract painting and drawing,” said Barnaby Wright, the deputy head of the Courtauld Gallery and a 20th-century specialist.
Vorticism was a literary and artistic movement that was influenced by cubism and futurism and whose artworks typically had bold colours, harsh lines and sharp angles. The poets TS Eliot and Ezra Pound were among the group’s supporters.
“Saunders was a really interesting figure, but she was largely overshadowed by her male contemporaries. She and Jessica Dismorr were the backbone of the group,” said Wright.
“She became close friends with Wyndham Lewis, they were extremely close emotionally, but after the war he turned his back on her and she found that hard to take. One speculative theory is that Lewis painted over Saunders’ work in a fit of pique. It’s entirely possible.”
There was not much of a contemporary market for the vorticists’ work, which may have contributed to the demise of the movement. “It was only later that the radical nature of the work became valued and celebrated,” said Wright.
The discovery of Saunders’ lost painting was “thrilling”, he said, and the result of the students’ “research brilliance”. The Courtauld hopes the find will spark renewed interest in the artist’s work.
The gallery will show Praxitella, loaned from Leeds Art Gallery, alongside the X-ray and partial colour reconstruction of Atlantic City as part of its exhibition of 18 of Saunders’ drawings and watercolours, tracing her artistic development.
Helen Saunders: Modernist Rebel opens at the Courtauld Gallery on 14 October.
