John Swarbrooke Fine Art is delighted to participate in Tracing Time, the second annual exhibition hosted by Trois Crayons held at Frieze No.9 Cork Street this summer from 26 June – 5 July 2025.
The exhibition will present the finest drawings and masterpieces on paper from renowned galleries and dealers which span the 15th century until the present day. 17 galleries from 6 countries will exhibit over 150 drawings, ranging from Old Master through to modern and contemporary. Tracing Time sees over 35 international galleries participating and more than 250 works being exhibited, doubling in size since its debut exhibition in 2024.
Artists exhibited by John Swarbrooke Fine Art will include Gustav Klimt, Françoise Gilot, Paul Klee, Denton Welch, Pablo Picasso, Larry Stanton and Francis Picabia.
To request availability of the below works, please click here.
Denton WELCH (1915-48)
Surrealist Composition, c. 1936-9
mixed media on paper
32 x 23 cm. (12⅝ x 9 in.)
£ + ARR
Provenance:
Private Collection, UK
Born in Shanghai in 1915 to a British-American family, Denton Welch became a student at Goldsmiths School of Art in London from 1933 to 1935. In 1935 Denton was involved in a cycling accident near his home on Croom’s Hill in Greenwich. The lasting physical effects of the accident would ultimately lead to his death in 1948, at the age of 33.
Welch lived a semi-invalided life in the Kent countryside with his devoted housekeeper, Evelyn ‘Evie’ Sinclair, who remained with Welch at his different residences until May 1946. His outsider status - as a gay man in a time when this was illegal, but also physically removed from society by his illness - is reflected in the rare, heightened sensibility in his art and writing.
Surrealist Composition reveals the influence of Surrealism on Welch, not least his contemporary René Magritte whose work was included in The International Surrealist Exhibition in London in the summer of 1936.
Gustav KLIMT (1862-1918)
Bekleidetes Skelett, nach rechts stehend (Clothed skeleton, standing to the right), 1902
chalk on paper
45 x 31 cm. (17 3⁄4 x 12 1⁄4 in.)
POA
Provenance:
Private Collection.
Anon. sale; Nagel Auktionen, Stuttgart, 11 March 1995, lot 1497.
Anon. sale; Nagel Auktionen, Stuttgart, 22 Oct. 2004, lot 782.
Anon. sale, 1. Art Consulting CZ, Prague, 5 Oct. 2008, lot 64.
Private Collection.
Christie’s Private Sales, London.
Private Collection, London.
Literature:
Modernae. Die totgeschwiegene Moderne, Illusions und Träume, Mitteleuropäische Kunst, exh. cat., Gallery of Fine Art, Chen, p. 16 (illus.)
Exhibited:
Cheb, Gallery of Fine Art, Modernae. Die totgeschwiegene Moderne, Illusions und Träume,
Mitteleuropäische Kunst, July – Oct. 2009, n.n.; this exhibition later travelled to Bayreuth, Kunstmuseum, Feb. – April 2010.
Saint Pölten, Landesmuseum Niederösterreich, Unbekannte Moderne aus Tschechien und Mitteleuropa, July – Nov. 2013.
For Gustav Klimt, sketching was an essential element of his artistic practice. Part of his quotidian activity, putting pencil to paper manifested his stream of thoughts into reality. Klimt’s confidence and familiarity with sketching is demonstrated here, the paper devoid of searching with his pencil, the skull scientifically precise.
Delicately rendered with simple line and light touch, yet resolutely occupying the surface, Bekleidetes Skelett, nach rechts stehend (1902) demonstrates how this master draughtsman could capture ideas incidentally yet profoundly. The skeletal figure stands eerily perpendicular to the viewer. The cloth draping over its body gives this spectral being an almost human quality. Devoid of shadow apart from its hollowed eyes, Klimt emphasises the planarity of the surface, the figure at a spatial remove from any surroundings, conjuring a spiritual presence.
This near obsession with sketching acted as a living archive of referents to culminate into his final paintings. Indeed, Bekleidetes Skelett, nach rechts stehend (1902) was a study for Klimt’s 1903 painting, Die Hoffnung I. Depicting a nude pregnant woman flanked by deathly
figures lurking in the background, Die Hoffnung I developed upon Klimt’s themes of human suffering, longing and the cycle of birth to death to rebirth. This memento mori forms part of this wider project in which Klimt explored the inescapable face of human existence; death. Yet viewed within its ultimate manifestation, this preliminary sketch stands for more than just death, but reconciliation and hope.
Françoise GILOT (1921-2023)
Birds and Anemones, 2008
signed lower right Françoise Gilot; dated and inscribed verso August 17, 2008 / F.G. Archives G. 3248
charcoal on paper
51 x 66 cm. (20 x 26 in.)
£ + ARR
Aurélia Engel has confirmed the authenticity of this work, which can be found in Françoise Gilot's archives under number 3248.
Provenance:
The Laura Pels Collection, USA.
Her estate sale; 20 June 2024, lot 35.
Private Collection, UK, acquired at the above sale.
A French artist of the post-World War II School of Paris, Françoise Gilot is perhaps most famous as a muse and lover to Pablo Picasso. While her story may be inextricably linked to 20th century art’s most towering figure, Gilot’s remarkable life and vast oeuvre deserves recognition on its own merits. In a career spanning over seven decades, Gilot’s distinct language, as seen in Birds and Anemones, reveals an enduring preoccupation with both the personal and universal forces of nature, time, space and mythology.
The present work dates to 2008, shortly before Gilot was made an Officer of the Legion d’Honneur, the French government’s highest honour for the arts. The work nevertheless echoes the earlier drawings of Gilot from the 1940s, composed with a fluid, assured line that captures the sense of a summer’s day.
Gilot’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Women’s Museum, Washington D.C.; the Musée Picasso, Antibes; the Musée Tel Aviv, Israel; and the Bibliothèque Nationale and Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris.
Pablo PICASSO (1881-1973)
Femme nue couchée, 1921
signed and dated lower right Picasso 18-6-20; inscribed verso in pencil 747 PP II
ink on paper
23 x 33 cm.
£ + ARR
Provenance:
Ernest Brown & Phillips.
The Leicester Galleries, London.
John Gunther, New York, prior to 1939; and thence by descent to
Private Collection, Connecticut.
Private Collection, UK.
Femme nue couchée was conceived at the height of Picasso's Neo-Classical phase (1917-1924). This was the period when Picasso's style consciously evoked the elegance and grandeur of Greco-Roman art and of the French 19th-century Neo-Classical paintings by Ingres. His emphasis during these years was on the strength of line and the monumentality of form, and his figures often resembled the classical sculpture that he encountered on trips to Italy and Fontainebleau during those years. When he applied this particular style to more intimate renderings, such as the present work, the results were often stunning.
Picasso here captures the form with the most skillful and precise draughtsmanship, creating a work of art that is at once distinctly modern and eternally beautiful. As Picasso once said about his own work, "To me there is no past or future in art. If a work of art cannot live always in the present it must not be considered at all. The art of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past; perhaps it is more alive today than it ever was" (quoted in Picasso: The Classical Period, C&M Arts, exh. cat., New York, 2003, p. 21).
Picasso's focus on the Classical age was a product of a movement, or 'call to order,' that dominated the avant-garde in France after World War I. This movement promoted linear precision and clear draftsmanship in art akin to the artistic style of Western antiquity. Its overarching socio-political goal was to cast France as the center of the new 'golden age' of civilization. This post-war cultural preoccupation could not have come at a better time for Picasso, who had all but exhausted Cubism by this point and was looking for a new way to challenge himself.
Denton WELCH (1915-48)
Still Life with Crab Claw, 1940s
gouache on paper, with inscribed detail
23 x 29 cm. (9 x 11 ⅖ in.)
£ + ARR
Provenance:
Private Collection, UK.
The present work reflects the rich colours and inventive composition that characterise Denton Welch’s work in the final decade of his life. In 1943 Welch was introduced to Eric Oliver, who would become his lover and closest confidante for the final five years of his life. Welch’s tours around the landscape of wartime Kent provided on the one hand escapism, with Denton picnicking, visiting grottoes and stopping at tea shops, his art of the time filled with the many antiques Denton collected. And yet his art could not avoid reflecting the all-encompassing power of the war - from encountering servicemen and Italian prisoners of war to the German Doodlebugs flying overhead and the destruction left behind. His interior world becomes by contrast more and more Arcadian, such as the patterned ceramic and vibrant fruit of the present work.
Francis PICABIA (1878-1953)
Tête de femme, c. 1939-40
signed lower left Francis Picabia
charcoal and pencil, heightened with gouache, on paper
34.4 x 24.8 cm. (13½ x 9¾ in.)
£ + ARR
Provenance:
Anon. sale; Tajan, Paris, 2 Dec. 1998, lot 5.
Anon. sale; Sotheby’s, New York, 7 Oct. 2008, lot 90.
Private Collection, acquired at the above.
Their sale; Christie’s, New York, 24 June 2009, lot 152.
Private Collection, acquired at the above sale.
Francis Picabia was visiting Switzerland with his partner, Olga Mohler, when the Second World War broke out in September 1939. Alarmed by the rapidly advancing hostilities, the artist returned to his apartment in Golfe-Juan in the South of France that October, where he would remain for much of the conflict. Working in a “popular” realist style, Picabia produced a large number of figurative paintings during the early years of the war, which can be divided into three main thematic strands—the female nude, narrative or allegorical works, and têtes de femme, close-up portraits of glamorous young women, such as the present work.. Using images plucked from fashion magazines, film posters and picture postcards for inspiration, Picabia explored the boundaries between mass-media, advertising and the realm of high art, in what would become one of the last great stylistic shifts in his richly varied oeuvre.
Paul KLEE (1879-1940)
Schatten Fürstin (Princess of the Shadows), 1940
signed upper right Klee upper right; titled, inscribed and dated 1940 y 14 Schatten Fürstin on lower edge of the artist's mount
pen and ink on paper, mounted on card
sheet: 29.5 x 21 cm (11 5/8 x 8 1/4 in.); artist's mount 35.2 x 24.4 cm. (13 7/8 x 9 5/8 in.)
£ + ARR
Provenance:
Werner Allenbach, Bern (until 1956).
Berggruen & Cie, Paris (1956–1959).
Galerie Würthle, Vienna.
Jacob D. Weintraub Gallery, New York (1959–1960).
Rosa and Aaron Esman (acquired from the above).
Thence by descent to the present owners.
Their sale; Phillips, New York, 16 May 2023, lot 178.
Private Collection. UK.
Literature:
Stefan Frey, Josef Helfenstein, Paul Klee. Verzeichnis der Werke des Jahres 1940, Bern, 1991, no. 1940.34, p. 50 (illus.)
The Paul Klee Foundation, ed., Paul Klee, Catalogue Raisonné, vol. 9, Bern, 2004, no. 9053, p. 48 (illus.)
Bettina Gockel, Die Pathologisierung des Künstlers, Berlin, 2010, fig. 78, pp. 240, 241, 373 (illus. p. 241)
Matthias Dieterle, Paul Klee, Der verborgene Engel, Zurich, 2012, no. 20.
Exhibited
Vienna, Galerie Würthle, Paul Klee. Zeichnungen und Aquarelle 1913–40, February–March 1959, no. 48
New York, New Art Center Gallery, Paul Klee. Drawings and Watercolors, January 18–February 20, 1960, no. 28, n.p.
Kunstmuseum Bern, Paul Klee. Das Schaffen im Todesjahr, August 17–November 4, 1990, no. 34, pp. 148, 289 (illustrated, p. 148)
Schatten Fürstin (Princess of the Shadows) dates from the artist’s rich and productive late period that began in 1937 and ended with his death in June 1940. It was in 1935 that Klee had been first diagnosed with the rare and incurable disease scleroderma. Unable to work throughout much of 1936, the last three years of Klee’s life were to witness an extraordinary development during which Klee produced a prodigious number of pictures and arguably, the finest work of his career.
Knowing he was dying, it has often been argued that Klee created a requiem for himself through his art of 1938-40. ‘Of course it is no accident that I am moving into the tragic vein,’ Klee commented at this time, ‘many of my works indicate this and say: the time has come…’ (Klee, quoted in E.G. Güse, ed., Paul Klee: Dialogue with Nature, Munich, 1991, p. 154).
In the present work the Princess of the Shadows appears combative, her fists clenched, and the strongest ink is used for her eyes, which stare out defiantly. Could this represent Klee’s own character in these final moments of life and the power of his medium? Klee had once, in 1920, described the creative process of drawing as ‘a certain fire, coming to life, [it] leaps up, runs through the hand, courses onto the paper, and flies back as a spark where it came from, thus completing the circle; back to the eye and on again’ (Klee, 1920, quoted in C. Hopfengart & M. Baumgartner, Paul Klee, Life and Work, Bern, 2012, p. 314).
Larry STANTON (1947-84)
Untitled, 1981
initialled and dated lower right
graphite on paper
43 x 35.5 cm. (16 7/8 x 14 in.)
£ + ARR
Provenance:
Apalazzo Gallery, Brescia.
Private Collection, acquired from the above.
Larry Stanton was a Manhattan-based portrait artist whose work was championed by David Hockney, Henry Geldzahler, Ellsworth Kelly and others. He lived and painted in Greenwich Village, New York, often travelling and painting in The Pines, Fire Island. He died of AIDS at the age of 37 in 1984.
The present work is believed to be a self-portrait. With strongly-assured line and shading, there is a powerful introspection to this drawing which captures the character of Stanton.