25 Facts About Edward Wadsworth

Edward Alexander Wadsworth was a British artist initially associated with the Vorticism movement.

Edward Wadsworth made a significant contribution to the development of modern art in Britain in the inter-war years.

Edward Wadsworth was born on 19 October 1889 in Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire to Fred and Hannah Wadsworth.

Edward Wadsworth's mother died of puerperal sepsis nine days after giving birth.

Edward Wadsworth's father was understandably devastated by the loss and found it difficult to relate to the baby.

Edward Wadsworth became a boarder at Godby's School, Ilkley at the age of 10 and was sent to Fettes College in Edinburgh in 1903.

At the time Fettes had a reputation as the 'toughest school in the British Isles' and Edward Wadsworth 'loathed most of his time there'.

Munich was a cultural hotbed and Edward Wadsworth was introduced to a lively artistic and intellectual way of life.

Edward Wadsworth attended Bradford School of Art before earning a scholarship to the Slade School of Art, London and spent some time at Le Havre, prior to the start of the autumn term in 1909.

Edward Wadsworth describes him as slowly developing in style and choice of media whilst at the Slade, yet only really making a real aesthetic leap when he met up with Wyndham Lewis.

Edward Wadsworth was starting to exhibit and had a work included in Fry's 'Second Post Impressionist Exhibition' in January 1913.

Edward Wadsworth exhibited some futurist-derived paintings at the Futurist Exhibitions at the Dore Gallery.

Edward Wadsworth exhibited woodcuts at the Twenty-One Gallery, London in spring 1914 and in that year he exhibited with the London Group, the Allied Artists' Salon and in the 'Twentieth Century Art' exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery.

Edward Wadsworth was closely associated with Wyndham Lewis and 'joined' his Rebel Art Group and was a signatory of the Vorticist Manifesto published in BLAST where he contributed illustrations and supplied a review of Kandinsky's Concerning The Spiritual In Art.

Edward Wadsworth signed up for the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve on 10 June 1916 and as a temporary sub-lieutenant he was based at Mudros on the island of Lemnos, Greece.

Edward Wadsworth produced a number of drawings and woodcuts of camouflaged ships at this time and for towards the end of the war he was commissioned by the Canadian War Memorials Fund to produce Dazzle-Ships in Drydock at Liverpool.

However, the pen and ink drawings of industrial landscapes that Edward Wadsworth exhibited there were developed by him into a one-man show The Black Country that was linked to a publication.

In January 1921 Edward Wadsworth's father died, leaving him almost a quarter of a million pounds.

Edward Wadsworth's work was reproduced in European avant-garde arts magazines and he could be seen as 'a leading British modernist artist'.

Edward Wadsworth was a founder member of two radical pro-abstract movements in the early 1930s.

Edward Wadsworth outlined his approach to 'abstract art' in an insightful article published in The Studio magazine in 1933.

Edward Wadsworth felt that the outcome of the Cunard Line commission was too compromised through the requirements for recognisable nautical subjects.

Edward Wadsworth had joined the Buxton Home Guard and after training he was promoted to sergeant.

The family moved back to Maresfield in 1945 and Edward Wadsworth painted a series of abstract images that incorporated flower imagery.

The graphic designer Peter Saville had seen Edward Wadsworth's painting Dazzle-ships in Drydock at Liverpool and was struck by the image.