Helen Saunders was a significant artist whom Wyndham Lewis promoted in his Blast magazine in 1914 and 1915. But the remarkable discovery that her work Atlantic City is below Lewis’s Praxitella of 1921 does not mean that he painted over it because he was annoyed (‘Fit of pique’: lost vorticist masterpiece found under portrait by contemporary, 21 August).
Saunders’ painting changed in the 1920s, becoming less abstract, and one wants to ask how Lewis got hold of this canvas. Surely Saunders must have given it to him? It’s reasonable to suggest that she no longer wanted it. And Lewis was often short of money to buy canvases.
They had been close, possibly lovers, but that ended after the first world war, and Lewis did not have a “fit of pique”, in the unlikely speculative theory mentioned by Barnaby Wright, the deputy head of the Courtauld Gallery.
What actually happened was that Saunders began to harass Lewis, following him about, sending innumerable telegrams and letters and making uninvited visits. Saunders’ mother tried to help Lewis deal with this, and Saunders eventually agreed to desist. All this information is in Paul O’Keeffe’s excellent biography of Lewis.
Alan Munton
Plymouth
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