Lewis's Laughing Women
Wyndham Lewis painted several important pictures of a laughing Kate Lechmere early in his career, probably during 1911. These are crucial early examples of Lewis's developing Vorticist aesthetic before the publication of BLAST. However, their history—who owned what and what Lewis exhibited where and when—remains confused. This essay attempts to shed a little light on the situation.
#art | #Lewis | #Vorticism
A brief introduction to a confusing history
Michel's (1971) catalogue raisonné argues the case for three canvases by Wyndham Lewis featuring laughing women:
The Laughing Woman (1912), a painting of unspecified size using oil on canvas and shown as exhibit #139 with the Contemporary Art Society (“CAS”) at the Goupil Gallery in April 1913 (“Goupil”). Michel's catalogue gives this the reference P5 and he identifies it with one of Lewis's accounts of these artworks (see L2 below). However, he adds the definite article to the title, presumably from the exhibition catalogue. Michel further identifies P5 with a canvas bought by Clive Bell as a committee member of the CAS for £50. Michel is unaware of P5's movements after the CAS ownership.
The Laughing Woman (1911), a lost drawing of unspecified size, catalogued as D22. Michel links this drawing with L1, based on a photograph provided to him by Gladys Hoskins, Lewis's widow [fn1]. This photo (“Photo 1”) shows an artwork featuring three horizontal paper strips, the key defining characteristic. It depicts a woman facing to her right in front of a curved arch or alcove. Kate Lechmere later told Michel that this picture might date some years after 1911.
Three Smiling Women (1911), another lost drawing, using gouache and over life-size, catalogued as D28. Michel links this to a further account given by Lewis in (see L3 below). Lechmere told Michel that this canvas featured three portraits with grinning faces and arms folded but that its heads were larger and less complicated than D22. Michel is, however, unwilling to fully corroborate Lewis's suggestion that the Tate owned this drawing. This is despite St John Hutchinson telling Lewis on 5 June 1918 that he had seen the large 'Laughing Women' at the Tate [fn2]. Michel concludes that Hutchinson had probably seen the picture in the possession of the CAS since he served on its committee at this time, whose store was at the Tate.
Michel concludes, although with a high degree of reservation, that (a) the CAS owned P5 and D28, (b) it did not own D22, and © we have lost all these artworks. Notably, Michel suggests Lewis exhibited P5 with the CAS at the Goupil, but he does not mention Lewis exhibiting any art with the Grafton Group at the Galleries of the Alpine Club in March 1913 (“Alpine”).
Lewis’s evidence
Lewis's famous '1917 List' – a typed manuscript of paintings and drawings, prepared for his mother before going to France with his artillery battery, now held at Cornell – identifies two artworks of laughing women [fn3].
First, hereafter identified as L1,
... a large paper roll, cartoon, “The Laughing Woman”,
in the possession of Helen Saunders [fn4].
And, L2:
'Laughing Woman' painting in possession of the Contemporary Art Society [fn5].
Note: The artworks in L1 and L2 could be the same. Lewis put together his '1917 List' in some haste. Given the descriptions, however, this idea seems unlikely, and I reject it below.
Lewis exhibited one of these pictures when Lady Drogheda opened her Lewis-decorated dining room to public inspection on 26 to 27 February 1914. But which 'laughing woman' is unclear. The Buffalo Sun of 26 February 1918 refers to A Laughing Woman [fn6].
In Rude Assignment (1950), Lewis says that he sold an over-life-size gouache of three smiling women to Bell on behalf of the CAS, and that it reminded Bell of Giotto. Lewis notes that someone left the canvas in the cellar at the Tate Gallery and that whoever owned it at that date lost it in a flood 15 years later. Hereafter, this account is L3.
Note: it may well be the artwork in L3 is the same as that in L1 or, more probably, L2. Lewis may have been referring to one woman, Kate Lechmere, in three stages of laughter. Could the 'gouache' be the 'painting', just loosely described?
Lewis told Oliver Brown a similar story to that in L3 about a 'large paper-picture' on 11 February 1937 [fn7] He cursorily implies that the owner was the Tate.
Lewis's story is certainly plausible. The Thames flooded at Lambeth on 7 January 1928, roughly fifteen years, give or take, after Lewis's dealings with Bell. It submerged all nine ground floors of the Tate (then named the National Gallery of British Art) and its basement. However, the Tate included no painting by Lewis in the list it drew up, categorising the damaged artwork.
There is a fourth account, L4, noted by Pound & Grover (1978, see E15) [fn8]. This comes in a detailed interview given by Lewis to the Daily News and published on 7 April 1914. The interview includes a photograph of two artworks entitled 'The Laughing Woman'. One is given in full and the other is inset. The first is [Smiling Woman Ascending a Stair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KateLechmere#/media/File:SmilingWomanAscendingaStair,WyndhamLewis,1912.jpg) (1911, Michel's D27, a charcoal and gouache artwork, now in a private collection). The inset is a detail from The Laughing Woman (Michel D22). Lewis tells the interviewer that the latter was a sketch for 'The Laughing Woman', bought by the CAS in the prior year. The implication is that the latter is a study for the former. However, this must be mistaken since the interviewer photographed Lewis in front of the former when 'it' Lewis had already sold it, so the interview tells us.
One other notable reference is from John Cournos in the Seven Arts (October 1917). He refers to the Laughing Woman as an approximation of how a machine might laugh.
The CAS's Laughing Woman
The [CAS report produced in 1920](https://contemporaryartsociety.org/sites/default/files/attachments/1914-19 CAS Annual Report.pdf) (for the years between 1914 and 1919) corroborates L2. In its list of purchases made prior to 1914, the CAS lists one 'oil' of unspecified dimensions in Lewis's name, titled Laughing Woman.
It does not corroborate the account in L3: there is no mention of the CAS owning anything similar to 'three smiling women'.
The [CAS's annual report of 1927](https://contemporaryartsociety.org/sites/default/files/attachments/1927 CAS Annual Report.pdf) (published in 1928) also casts doubt on L3. The CAS notes that the flood at the Tate had delayed the publication of its annual report. Although some of its pictures had sustained 'slight damage', the necessary repairs had not, it appears, impacted their value. Ivor Churchill's report to the Society identified damage to a few works by Rouault (probably La Mariée, 1907), de Segonzac (Cows), and Moreau (Head of a Woman).
Ultimately, then, neither the Tate nor the CAS appear to support L3, namely that any work (or works) by Lewis ended up floating around on the muddy waters of the Thames. It is conceivable that the Tate did not document the loss. It did not own the picture. Its list of damaged artworks does not mention the Rouault, de Segonzac, or the Moreau either, which we know for certain did sustain damage.
Still, it seems strange that the CAS ignored or overlooked it.
Do the CAS's annual reports before 1927 help unravel this?
The 1911 report contains no Lewis artwork.
Note: The 1913 report is unlocated at the date of writing.
Lewis's oil is listed in the report published in 1920 (see above), and in the 1919-24 report. The latter notes receipt of a number of gifts, including Lewis's Miss Babs Youngman ([c.1920s], Michel D675) from Edward Marsh in memory of Rupert Brooke, and Mrs Kennington (1923, Michel D580), from Lady [Maud] Cunard. Notably, the CAS also gifted John's Smiling Woman (1908-9) to the Tate.
Note: the tempting idea that it was John's artwork floating in the muddy Thames flood water is quickly dashed: it doesn't feature on the Tate's list of damaged works either.
There is no mention of Lewis's 'oil' in 1925 or 1927, but by this date, the CAS was not listing all its substantial inventory.
How, then, should we account for the CAS's failure to report the damage/loss of Lewis's work? Most probably because several pieces of evidence suggest we ought to be very cautious in treating its annual reports as complete.
First, Churchill's report above suggested only minor damage to the de Segonzac painting, whereas it would appear, from later reports, that the painting was lost entirely to the flood. It seems possible that the CAS did not have all the information from the flood at hand when it prepared its report for 1927.
Second, the 1927 report states that the CAS gifted Portrait of a Woman to the Whitworth Institute in Manchester that year. This could only be D580 since D675 was not gifted until 1947 (and to the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery). The name change is unusual but not uncommon in Lewis's catalogue. But somehow, that drawing ended up in the same year at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
In 1928, the CAS gifted The Lascar (1919, Michel D336) to the Whitworth. But it is unclear how it came to have The Lascar in the first place. The CAS's website now states the drawing (titled, Nude) was gifted by Sidney Schiff in 1926. Despite this, the CAS's annual reports make no mention of it.
O'Keeffe's Laughing Woman and The Laughing Woman
O'Keefe diverges from Michel's account, and I think he is correct to do so.
He highlights that Lewis exhibited, anonymously and untitled in line with Roger Fry's policy, at the Alpine a month before the CAS at the Goupil (hereafter, K1). The reviews of this exhibition in the Daily Telegraph (Phillips, 'The Grafton Group', 22 March 1913), Daily Chronicle (Lewis Hind, 'New Art and Newer Literature', 24 March 1913), and Pall Mall Gazette ('Gallery and Studio: The Grafton Group', 27 March 1913) describe a large (life-size) artwork of three smiling or laughing archaic women, variously described as a design, a diagram and, unhelpfully given Lewis's description of the rolled paper in L1, a cartoon. Further descriptions can be found in the Manchester Courier (21 March 1913) and Westminster Gazette (25 March 1913). O'Keeffe links this Alpine gallery exhibit (K1) to the gouache that ends up in the Thames mud in L3.
So far, we have Michel in agreement with O'Keeffe here: Michel's D28 is the O'Keefe's K1, although Michel doesn't identify D28 as exhibited at the Alpine.
They disagree, however, about the canvas exhibited at the Goupil. O'Keeffe's second 'Laughing Woman', K2, is the cartoon in L1. Michel has this as a drawing, D22. But whereas O'Keeffe suggests K2, the cartoon, was exhibited at the Goupil, Michel says it was P5, an oil.
O'Keeffe cites three pieces of evidence to support this. First, the arched alcoves in Photo 1 match the Athenaeum's descriptions in its review (22 March 1913) of the Alpine exhibition. This suggests to O'Keeffe that this artwork was based on a section of the three-figure composition. Second, the strips of paper in Photo 1 match the description in L1. And third, O'Keeffe identifies (and estimates the size of) the cartoon in a further photo, Photo 2, from the [Evening Standard](https://www.flashpointmag.com/KateLechmeremain.htm) of 30 March 1913 [fn9].
Note: This may be true, but the photographic identification does not seem definitive to me.
O'Keeffe further explains that Bell became the six-month buyer for the CAS on 1 July 1913, and quickly bought the picture Laughing Woman. He argues the painting Bell paid £50 for on behalf of the CAS was the three laughing women, the gouache in L3, his K1, Michel's D28. And he makes the play that the lack of a definite article is a clue to the acquisition coming from the Alpine and not the Goupil.
Note: O'Keeffe's account gets especially confusing around the word 'cartoon'. He uses it to describe both the artworks exhibited at the Alpine and Goupil. Only one was described by Lewis as a cartoon, although, as highlighted previously, the word was used about the gouache by the press.
Towards an exhibition history
After Bell's acquisition of Lewis's artwork for the CAS, it most probably remained at Bell's home, 46 Gordon Square. But it moved around quickly after that.
December 1913-January 1914
A 'Laughing Woman' was in Bournemouth at the Municipal College from 31 December 1913 to 24 January 1914. The Bournemouth Guardian (3 January 1914) had a long piece describing the opening of this exhibition of loan pictures organised by the local branch of the CAS. And the Bournemouth Graphic (16 January 1914) described Lewis's 'Laughing Woman', exhibit 21, as a capable effort, emphasising the head of the central figure in the work. The exhibition culminated with a lecture by Fry on the 'New Movement in Art'.
January 1914
On 31 January, it was with the CAS at the Sandon Studios in Liverpool (its number, exhibit 102, suggesting a much larger exhibition to the one at Bournemouth). It was described as a nightmarish shape by the Liverpool Daily Post (2 February).
February 1914
At the end of that month, it was at the Mappin Art Gallery in Sheffield (exhibit 102 again). A piece in the Yorkshire Post (28 February) clearly describes it as a picture of three laughing women, making a play on the link between Cubism and the mathematical 'cubed'. The Sheffield Daily Telegraph (28 February) has a very detailed description of the artwork. The Sheffield Independent (28 February) confuses matters by calling it 'Three Women', emphasising its diagrammatic structure.
June 1914
At some point between 15 and 19 June 1914, it was one of the 42 artworks on display before the CAS AGM at 53 Grosvenor Street. Lewis Hind noted it in the Daily Chronicle on 25 June.
Here the trail of the Laughing Woman appears to go cold.
The CAS lent several unspecified artworks to the Whitechapel Art Gallery, presumably for 'Twentieth Century Art' held between 8 May and 20 June 1914. The only known Lewis exhibit at that exhibition was Slow Attack (1913-14, Michel P13). 57 of the CAS's pictures were in Leicester from 7 September [fn10]. By the end of November, the CAS was in Belfast. The CAS also lent pictures to Rochdale and Glasgow in 1915, Switzerland in 1918, and Leicester in 1919. Whether Lewis's Laughing Woman featured in any of these locations is unknown. Lewis's artwork was on display again with the CAS at Grosvenor House in 1923, in Bath in 1928, and in Dunfermline and Stoke-on-Trent in 1929. By 1923, however, the CAS owned several Lewis artworks.
Some sort of a conclusion
The current evidence would seem to suggest that The Laughing Woman was a preparatory sketch for the CAS's Laughing Woman (one woman, three stages of laughter), an artwork committed to the vaults of the Tate towards the end of 1914 on behalf of the CAS, briefly seen by St John Hutchinson in 1918, before it was set free on the muddy water of the Thames in 1928.
Footnotes 1. See Michel, plate 3. 2. Cornell, b112 f43. 3. 'TM & TM[copy] Listing of Paintings and Drawings, [1914-1918]', box 19 folder 16. 4. Qtd. Michel, 1971. 5. Ibid. 6. Added, 6 March 2025. 7. Rose (1963), p.243. 8. Added, 4 March 2025. 9. Reproduced here: https://www.flashpointmag.com/Kate_Lechmere_main.htm. 10. The CAS may have loaned a smaller exhibition earlier in the year, around April or May. See Leicester Daily Mercury, 19 May 1914.