Jessie Dismorr: a little gallery

Jessie Dismorr: a little gallery

Of all the women Vorticists or associates of Vorticism, Jessie (later Jessica) Dismorr has perhaps received most attention in recent years.  But no substantial study has appeared; the definitive reference must be Catherine Heathcock’s 1999 PhD dissertation, but this still sits in the University of Birmingham awaiting a publisher.  Beyond references in general treatments of Vorticism, solid information is pretty much limited to Quentin Stevenson’s excellent little biography in the catalogue of the Fine Art Society’s 2000 exhibition of Dismorr and Catherine Giles.

Many questions remain: the nature of her relationship with Wyndham Lewis; the psychological anguish she endured over many years; the abrupt changes in her visual style; the reasons – which must remain a matter of speculation – for her tragic suicide in 1939. Given her recent reputation, it comes as a bit of a surprise to find that so little work from her Vorticist period remains; in fact, relatively little may have been produced in the first place.

Since her work before and after that period is well worth attention, it has made sense to round up as much as I can find from her entire career, simply for the sake of seeing it together. Individual items set into this wider context spark off against each other revealingly. However, this little “gallery” is well short of the total surviving, and I have not attempted a listing of all known works, which would be well beyond me. As further images come along, they will be added. I have divided the work into broad categories in chronological sequence. Image resolution is not always the best, I’m afraid. Where an item is in a public collection, the location is briefly noted in the caption.

Post-Impressionist and Fauvist works, 1911-13

Avignon, 1910

Luxembourg Gardens, c1911

Sunlight Martigues, 1911

Martigues Market, 1911

Night Scene Martigues, 1911-12

Landscape, Southern France, c1911-12

Landscape with Figures [Sheffield]

Landscape with Cottages, c1913 [Government Art Collection]

Landscape With Trees, c1911-12 [Government Art Collection]

The Ruin, Les Baux, c1911

Les Baux; the Priest Enters his Church, 1911

Les Baux from the Valley

Italian Landscape, 1912

Les Baux, 1912

In the Garden, 1912

The Square, exhibited 1914

Portrait of a Young Girl, 1913

Except for the watercolour Luxembourg Gardens, these are oils. The influence of Dismorr’s teacher J D Fergusson is clear. A progression can be seen away from exuberant colour and towards more severity of form, perhaps anticipating the Vorticist period. The Portrait was bought by Roger Fry, maybe in validation of his own muddy palette and stolid compositions. The Square was exhibited in 1914, so perhaps painted in 1913.

Drawings for Rhythm, 1911-12

Nude

‘Rhythm’ 1, 1911

‘Rhythm’ 1, 1911

‘Rhythm’ 1, 1911

Isadora, ‘Rhythm’ 2, 1911

‘Rhythm’ 3, 1911

‘Rhythm’ 4, 1912

‘Rhythm’ 5, 1912

‘Rhythm’ 11, 1912

Apart from the undated (and rather Japanese) drawing shown first, which seems to fit here, all these are reproductions published in John Middleton Murry’s literary and arts magazine Rhythm, whose art editor was Fergusson. The house style was a sort of progressive art nouveau, often using the female form as a symbol of natural vitalism, as exemplified by Dismorr’s beautifully competent illustrations and space-fillers. I have included here all named as hers or using her circular “JSD” monogram, together with a couple that appear to be by her. The fluent and confident  handling of outline and edge is a strength that runs through much of Dismorr’s work. Commentators have seen in the image of Isadora Duncan an early shift towards the angularity of the Vorticist period.

Vorticist and post-Vorticist works, 1914-1922

Edinburgh Castle 1914-15 [V&A]

Abstract Composition, 1915 [Tate]

Design, ‘Blast’ 2, 1915

The Engine, ‘Blast’ 2, 1915

cover, ‘Poems’, 1918

Wyndham Lewis with Cat, c1919

Drawing, Group X catalogue, 1920

Self Portrait, Group X catalogue, 1920

Conversation, ‘The Tyro’ 2, 1922

The Tate’s Abstract Composition seems to be Dismorr’s sole surviving Vorticist oil; whatever happened to Movements, the only Dismorr purchased by American collector John Quinn? It’s interesting that Abstract Composition employs unique and tonally modelled solid forms that tumble through space; in this it is atypical of much other Vorticist work. Design and The Engine survive only in reproduction, as do Drawing, Self Portrait and Conversation, in Blast 2, The Group X exhibition catalogue and Lewis’s The Tyro 2, respectively. The figures of Drawing are somewhat Lewisian, while the later Conversation parallels Lewis’s move towards semi-abstract figures incorporating sections of circles. Wyndham Lewis with Cat is a beautifully humane little drawing that belies Lewis’s punchy self image, showing him as tender, domestic, a little chubby and – yes, almost vulnerable. Edinburgh Castle (Dismorr’s title) is unhelpfully listed as Landscape, with no image, in the V&A online catalogue.

How little there is from this important period! But the select group of survivors is perhaps expanded by the other two images shown here – a cover design and a colophonic space filler, both from a hand written collection of Dismorr’s poems given to the American modernist sculptor and printmaker John Storrs, who she met in France. In this “exchange of writings” proposed by Dismorr, she received poems by Storrs, who also in July 1918 gave her one of his woodcuts. (To Storrs, she politely professed an enjoyment of his poems for their “great love of beauty”.) Her collection survives in the Storrs papers in the Smithsonian, where the cover is attributed to him. However, I can’t locate the evidence for this assertion, and the graphic style is so very much compatible with elements of Edinburgh Castle and the two Blast drawings, that for me the probability is with Dismorr’s authorship. The style of lettering is also compatible with Dismorr’s hand – in particular the elongated “S”. (Both Dismorr’s poems of this period and the influence of Vorticism on the work of Storrs might be fruitful topics for another day.)

Landscapes 1921-5

Collioure, 1921

Continental Street Scene, 1924

Lewes, West Sussex, 1925

Road to the Hills, Provence

In 1921 Dismorr suffered a major breakdown, which might account for the “safe” approach of this series of pleasant but bland watercolours.  In late 1923 she changed her name to Jessica.  In 1925 her show at the Mayor Gallery comprised 37 watercolours, all but two landscapes. A series of watercolours of music hall figures from 1924 is not represented here.

Heads & portraits, 1926-c.1933

Double Portrait, c1926

Self Portrait, c1928

Self Portrait, c1929 [National Portrait Gallery]

Portrait of Robert Farrant, c1929

Mrs Ody

Portrait of a Lady Holding a Book

Portrait of a Young Girl

Woman in a Pink Dress

Mother and Child, c1932

Conversation at Cagnes

Interior

Young Child

In 1926 Dismorr  joined the London Group and the Seven and Five, with both of whom she continued to exhibit. These oils seem to represent a positive change of direction. Some have a touch of the feigned naivety of Christopher Wood, or even a hint of George Grosz, as in Conversation at Cagnes, where the left hand figure must be meant for James Joyce, surely? The undated drawing Young Child is the odd one out here, but is assumed to belong to this phase.

Drawings of poets, 1934-5

Dylan Thomas

George Barker

I have already noted these two on one of my George Barker pages. In 1934-5 Dismorr was introduced by Roger Roughton to the up-and-coming poetry scene, and to David Archer’s bookshop; she also made portrait drawings of Roughton, David Gascoyne, John Pudney, A S J Tessimond, Stephen Spender, William Empson, Charles Madge and C Day Lewis. It’s to be hoped that the remainder are better than these two; something of the cherubic Thomas is there, but Barker has been reduced to glossy unrecognisability.

Compositions, 1936-7

Vases on a Table, 1937

Greek Vases with Minotaur

These “decorative” compositions are the precursors of the final abstracts; they feature shapes of vases, jugs etc in restricted and neutral colour schemes. Their broad relation to the still lives of Ben Nicholson and others is self evident. Personally, I can’t see any Minotaur.

Abstract works, 1936-9

title unknown

Two Forms, 1936

Abstract 1, 1936

Abstract 2, c1938

Related Forms, 1936-9 [Arts Council Collection]

Related Forms

Related Forms, 1937 [Tate]

Related Forms, 1937

Superimposed Forms, 1938

Superimposed Forms, 1938 [Birmingham]

For this final phase, Dismorr switched to gouache or tempera. Despite an early suggestion of Arp, the concerns of the “decorative compositions” follow through. The separated forms were tagged by friends as “Jessica’s dress patterns”, which seems a perfectly feasible reference, while the shapes in Superimposed Forms suggest heads and torsos, so that the human figure is never entirely absent. The subtle palettes of browns, beiges and greys hum quietly, and the later, more refined compositions have a strong dignity. At least two of her final compositions were painted in more than one version. In the 2000 Fine Art Society catalogue Abstract 2 is illustrated positioned horizontally. This way round looks right to me.

On 29 August 1939 Jessica Dismorr hanged herself. The reasons suggested seem speculative, though the fear of further breakdown might make sense. One friend suggested that the trigger was the “sacrifice of her own complexity” in these last works – the inevitability of her further movement into abstraction, with the knowledge of its unbearable coldness and de-sensualisation. Instead, death proved her ultimate abstraction.