Percy Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957)
Lot 19

Percy Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957)

Portrait of Olivia Shakespeare

Closed16 July 2014

Price Realised

GBP 8,750

More Information

How to sell

Percy Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957)
Portrait of Olivia Shakespeare
signed 'Wyndham Lewis' (lower right)
pencil and wash
15¾ x 11½ in. (40 x 29.2 cm.)

Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 13 November 1987, lot 317, where purchased by the present owner.

Specialist note

The present work captures the beauty and grace of Olivia Shakespear (born Olivia Tucker, 1863-1938), a British novelist, playwright and a patron of the arts. In 1909, she met Ezra Pound who later married her daughter, Dorothy Shakespear. Through Olivia Shakespear Pound was introduced to W.B. Yeats.

After first meeting Shakespear in 1894, Yeats described her as having 'a perfectly Greek regularity, though her skin was a little darker than a Greek’s would have been and her hair was very dark. She was exquisitely dressed … and had the same sensitive look of distinction I had admired in Eva Gore-Booth' (D. Donoghue (ed.), W.B. Yeats: Memoirs, London, 1974, p. 72).