Vortex No. 2

Details

JOHN CECIL STEPHENSON (1889-1965)
Vortex No. 2
signed, inscribed and dated 'JC STEPHENSON 1939/"VORTEX" No. 2' (on the reverse), inscribed again '6 Mall Studios Hampstead NW3 Parkhill Road' (on the stretcher)
tempera on canvas laid on panel
18 x 24 in. (45.7 x 61 cm.)
Painted in 1939.

Provenance

with Marlborough Fine Art, London.
John Bruckland.
His estate sale; Christie's, London, 26 March 1993, lot 2.
with Jonathan Clark Fine Art, London, where purchased by the present owner.

Literature

S. Guthrie, The Life and Art of John Cecil Stephenson, Grange-over-Sands, 1997, p. 83, as 'Vortex II'.

Exhibited

Leeds, City Art Gallery, catalogue not traced.
London, Drian Galleries, Memorial Exhibition of Cecil Stephenson, November - December 1966, no. 19.

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Lot Essay

Vortex No. 2 relates to another painting of 1939, Vortex I, which Simon Guthrie describes as 'a design of seven curved triangles grouped together in the middle of the picture area'. He continues, 'Vortex I reintroduces some of the novelties seen in some of the 1938 crayon sketches. In these the curved triangles are either open, or filled with a solid colour, or there is a marginal colour and a central colour, and this provides great variety. Vortex I and II are extremely tightly composed pictures. Compared to the relaxed grandeur of the 1937 pictures, they are like a clenched fist, the design crystallised into a close-knit group of forms' (S. Guthrie, The Life and Art of John Cecil Stephenson, Grange-over-Sands, 1997, p. 83).

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