Nigel Tangye 1946

Wyndham Lewis painted Nigel Tangye in a palette of yellows, browns, and blues. The painting seems to emerge from a tension between the desire to capture a likeness and the urge to reduce the figure to geometric forms. I can imagine Lewis scrutinizing Tangye’s face, trying to capture something of his character, but at the same time I sense the painting constantly slipping away from him. Look at how Lewis captures the light on Tangye’s yellow cardigan. The paint is applied in such a way that each brushstroke is visible, creating a kind of shimmering surface. And then there’s the background – a dark, almost oppressive blue, that seems to push Tangye forward, into our space. You can almost feel Lewis wrestling with his materials, trying to find a way to make all these disparate elements cohere into a single, unified image. It's like he’s inviting us to participate in the act of seeing. Like all great paintings, it invites us into a conversation.