Portraits for Seven Pillars of Wisdom A signed, limited, and numbered issue, copy #136 of 220

Commissioned by T. E. Lawrence; Artists: Frank Dobson, Colin Gill, Augustus John, Eric Kennington, Henry Lamb, William Nicholson, William Roberts, William Rothenstein, John Singer Sargent, Gilbert Spencer, and R. M. Young

Edité par Castle Hill Press, Fordingbridge, England, 2008

A propos de cet article

This Castle Hill Press reproduction of the original Portraits for Seven Pillars of Wisdom was initially conceived to accompany the 1997 first Castle Hill Press limited edition of the full 1922 "Oxford Text" of Seven Pillars of Wisdom. This Portraits volume is a stunning visual accompaniment to any Seven Pillars of Wisdom text, featuring 41 full-page Seven Pillars Portraits, 26 in full color. These are the portraits originally commissioned by Lawrence himself for his magnificent and legendary 1926 Subscriber's edition.Castle Hill Press was headed by Lawrence s official biographer, Jeremy Wilson (1944-2017). Years after the 1997 edition of Seven Pillars and the accompanying issuance of the Portraits, Wilson s Castle Hill Press issued a limited number of this stand-alone Portraits volume. In 2008, 220 sets of portraits were issued thus, bound in quarter linen cloth over tan, laid paper-covered boards. The binding measures a substantial 11.375 x 8.125 inches (28.89 x 20.64 cm). The limitation page is hand-numbered in red ink, this copy being "136." This copy is in fine condition, the binding pristine, the contents immaculate.Seven Pillars of Wisdom is the story of T. E. Lawrence's (1888-1935) remarkable odyssey as instigator, organizer, hero, and tragic figure of the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, which he began as an eccentric junior intelligence officer and ended as "Lawrence of Arabia." This time defined Lawrence with indelible experience and celebrity, which he spent the rest of his short life struggling to reconcile and reject, to recount and repress. Lawrence famously resisted publication of his magnum opus for the general public during his lifetime. After numerous drafts, abandonments, and revisions, in 1922, a 335,000 word version was carefully circulated to select friends and literary critics - the famous "Oxford Text". George Bernard Shaw called it "a masterpiece".Nonetheless, Lawrence was unready to see it distributed to the public. In 1926, a further edited 250,000 word "Subscriber's Edition" was produced by Lawrence - but fewer than 200 copies were made, each lavishly and uniquely bound. The process cost Lawrence far more than he made in subscriptions. An essential part of the elaborate effort that produced the famous edition were the portraits commissioned by Lawrence for the edition from Frank Dobson, Colin Gill, Augustus John, Eric Kennington, Henry Lamb, William Nicholson, William Roberts, William Rothenstein, John Singer Sargent, Gilbert Spencer, and R. M. Young. Eric Henri Kennington (1888-1960), himself a veteran of the First World War, was by far the dominant artistic vision in these portraits, responsible for 24 of the 41 and serving as art editor for the 1926 Subscribers Edition. Kennington actually traveled to the Middle East in order to draw his subjects from life, rather than from photographs, collecting portraits on a private journey through Trans-Jordan and the Hejaz. Known as a painter, print maker, and sculptor, Kennington was best regarded as "a born painter of the nameless heroes of the rank and file" whom he portrayed during both the First and Second World Wars. After the First World War, Kennington met T. E. Lawrence at an exhibition of Kennington's war art. It is a credit to Kennington s portraiture that he was even able to capture Lawrence s own fretful relationship with his own fame. After Kennington produced a bust of Lawrence, the subject wrote to the sculptor "It represents not me, but my top-moments, those few seconds in which I succeed in thinking myself right out of things." In 1935, Kennington served as one of Lawrence's pallbearers. Kennington s portraits, and those of his fellow artists, were considered by Lawrence an essential accompanying element to his text. It is difficult not to agree.

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Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: Portraits for Seven Pillars of Wisdom A signed, limited, and numbered issue, copy #136 of 220
• Éditeur: Castle Hill Press, Fordingbridge, England
• Date de parution: 2008
• Reliure: Hardcover
• Édition: Limited and numbered issue of 2008.