Sir Max Beerbohm

Catalogue entry

N06075 THE NEW ENGLISH ART CLUB 1907
 
Inscr. ‘N.E.A.C. Max 1907’ t.l.  
Pencil, pen and watercolour, 13 1/2×16 1/2 (34×42).  
Purchased from the Leicester Galleries (Knapping Fund) 1952.  
Coll: T. Geoffrey Blackwell, purchased at the Leicester Galleries 1911; sold Christie's, 6 July 1951 (3), bought Leicester Galleries.
Exh: Leicester Galleries, May 1911 (59); Leicester Galleries, May 1952 (125).
Lit: Lynch, 1921, pp.132–3 (on the 1906 version - see below); Manchester Guardian, 1 May 1952.
Repr: Exh. cat., Memorial Exhibition, Leicester Galleries, June 1957 (wrongly as No.150, the version of 1906 - see below); Sir Joseph Duveen, Thirty Years of British Art, 1930, p.4.

The date has been read as 1909 but the last figure seems to be a seven. The members of the New English Art Club shown are, from left to right, Sickert, W. G. de Glehn, Orpen (below), Augustus John, D. S. MacColl, Steer, Tonks, William Rothenstein (on table), Sargent, Albert Rutherston (under table), L. A. Harrison and Walter Russell. The drawing is a revised version of the one of 1906 in the collection of Sir John Rothenstein (repr. Max Beerbohm, A Book of Caricatures, 1907, pl.14), in which both MacColl and Tonks stand to the left of Steer, following the same curve, instead of framing him, and Roger Fry and Conder appear instead of Sargent and de Glehn respectively.

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I

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