Percy
Wyndham Lewis
was
born in Amehurst, Nova Scotia in 1882. Lewis came to England and was
educated at Rugby School and the Slade
School of Art (1898-1901). After leaving art college Lewis spent
the next seven years in Europe. When he returned
to England in 1909 he began publishing stories, essays, novels and
plays.
In 1912 Lewis became the founder of Vorticism, a literary and artistic
movement. Members of the group included Charles
Nevinson, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska,
William Roberts and Alvin
Langdon Coburn. In his journal, Blast
(1914-15), Lewis attacked the sentimentality of 19th century art
and emphasized the value of violence, energy and the machine. In the
visual arts Vorticism was expressed in abstract compositions of bold
lines, sharp angles and planes.
From 1916 to 1918 Lewis served on the Western
Front as a battery officer. He was also commissioned by Lord
Beaverbrook and the Canadian War Memorials Fund
to paint A
Canadian Gun Pit.
However, his most famous war painting is A
Battery Shelled.
Lewis later wrote an account of his experiences in the war entitled,
Blasting
and Bombardiering (1937).
After the First World War Lewis developed right-wing
views and was sympathetic to the political changes taking place in
Germany and Italy. On the outbreak of the Second
World War returned to Canada. In 1951 Lewis went blind and was
forced to give up painting. In his later years he concentrated on
writing, this included the autobiographical Self-Condemned
(1954) and The
Human Age
(1955). Percy
Wyndham Lewis
died in 1957.
Percy Wyndham Lewis, A Battery Shelled (1919)
(1) Percy Wyndham
Lewis, letter to Mary Borden Turner (1915)
I must join the Army. I have as little reason to be shot at once and
without a hearsay as any artist in Europe, but have certain accomplishments
(such as an unusual mastery of French) that might be of more use than
my trusty right arm, which, I flatter myself, is rather a creative
than destructive limb.
(2) Percy
Wyndham Lewis, letter to Ezra Pound (6th June, 1917)
I am here (in the firing line) since yesterday. Battery split up,
and I have come as reinforcements. Whizzing, banging and swishing
and thudding completely surround me, and I almost jog up and down
on my camp bed as though I were riding in a country wagon or a dilapidated
taxi. I am in short, my dear colleague, in the midst of an unusually
noisy battle.
(3)
In his autobiography, Blasting and Bombardiering, Wyndham Lewis
explained how in December 1917 he became a war artist.
We lived in a large chateau. Our life there was uneventful, dignified,
and aloof. The contrast to the squalid mud hovels of the Front was
a little startling. And we had a staff car at our disposal which reported
for duty every morning. I ran down to my battery in the car - to my
new Canadian battery. It was a "6 inch How" battery. I had
nothing to do with it, of course, except to paint it. It stood by
itself, in the great open spaces of Vimy Ridge. There was nothing
near it.
(4)
The Daily Express (13th December,
1919)
Wyndham Lewis endeavours to show the war in terms of energy - Battery
Shelled - in which the symbolism dominates, in which men lose their
human form in action; chimneys wave and bend, and the very shells
zigzag in lumps and masses across the sky.
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