Austin Osman Spare
Complacency - Apprehension - Perplexity
c. 1927, British
Pencil and light pastel on paper
Original matt
Signed Austin Osman Spare and written at the base in Spare’s hand “And forward though I cannot guess and fear.” Exhibition label: Alex, Reid & Lefevre, LTD., London, England, No. 58
18 x 15 inches
Provenance: Andrew Chumbley, Frank Letchford Collection, Desmond Coke Collection
Exhibited:
Alex, Reid & Lefevre, LTD., London, April 1929
Literature: The Exhibition Catalogues of Austin Osman Spare, edited by Robert Ansell. London: Fulgur Ltd., 2012. Illustrated p. 224.
Previously owned by Frank Letchford, great friend of Spare and author of "Inferno to Zos, Michelangelo in a Teacup," an important memoir of the artist. It has Letchford’s typed label which reads “Purchased from Abbott & Holder of Castlenau, S.W.13 in 1971 (Frank Letchford Collection “Complacency, Apprehension and Perplexity – heads of a Young Woman, young boy, middle-aged man exquisitely rendered in pencil and slight color on grey paper. Ex-Desmond Coke Collection (well-known author and collector of the 1920’s and 1930’s…” a note in pen on this label reads “circa 1924/5” An older looking label gives the title, artist and again states it is from the Desmond Coke collection. Coke was an early and important patron for whom Spare designed a bookplate, an author of fiction he was also celebrated for his aesthetic taste as a collector and in 1928 published a book, Confessions of an Incurable Collector. Whilst the very finely drawn portraits are entirely conventional, amorphous swirls of energy course between them.
Austin Osman Spare (1886 – 11956) was an English artist and occultist who worked as both a draughtsman and a painter. Influenced by symbolism and the artistic decadence of art nouveau, his art was known for its clear use of line, and its depiction of monstrous and sexual imagery. In an occult capacity, he developed idiosyncratic magical techniques including automatic writing, automatic drawing and sigilization based on his theories of the relationship between the conscious and unconscious self.