Peter Rose Pulham, 
British 1910-1956 - 
Grisaille figure, 1948; 
oil on canvas, signed, annotated and...

Peter Rose Pulham, 
British 1910-1956 - 

Grisaille figure, 1948; 

oil on canvas, signed, annotated and dated on the reverse 'Peter Rose Pulham 37 quai des Grands Augustins  Mars 1948', 73 x 100.2 cm (unframed) (ARR) (Import VAT Charged on the Hammer Price) 

Provenance: 
Isabel Rawsthorne (1912-1992), acquired from the artist; 
Private Collection, gifted by the above and thence by descent 

Note: 
Peter Rose Pulham initially worked as a photographer, moving to Paris in the 1930s where he created celebrated photographic portraits of Pablo Picasso in his studio and discovered and became involved with the Surrealists. The artist's address on the back of the work is close to Picasso's studio at 7 quai des Grands Augustins, where the artist lived in the 1930s and WWII. Examples of Pulham's work can be found in the National Galleries of Scotland and Tate collections. During his lifetime, the artist exhibited with Redfern Gallery in 1947, Hanover Gallery in 1950 and the ICA in 1952. 

The present work demonstrates the unique visual language that Pulham developed in the Post-War era alongside his friends Isabel Rawsthorne and Francis Bacon. Isolating and abstracting the figure in an empty space that recalls the bars of a gymnasium, Pulham creates a sense of the human figure that is both animalistic and unknowable. A similar work 'Grisaille: Figures I, 1947' was sold at Christie's, London on the 2nd February 2016 for £12,500 premium, which was one of three paintings in this series that were exhibited at The London Gallery in 1948. The grey and hairless forms of the figure recall Bacon's 'Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, c.1943-4' created only a few years earlier. The influence of Picasso's sculptural yet biomorphic figures from his Surrealist  period are also clearly visible.