‘Watching Theatre’, a pencil and crayon on paper sketch by Clare Winsten (Clara Birnberg).

Description

The profile faces of two people sitting close together (or is it different views of one person?) look out into the middle distance in the sketch to observe something. The close quarters nature of the composition and the curving element on the left that looks like a curtain are perhaps suggestive of a box at a theatre. This is futhered by the use of a flat plane of a harlequin-like pattern 'behind' the head(s), which could also suggest abstracted rows of occupied and unoccupied theatre seats. Balancing light and dark, the entire composition is both abstract and figural, and the viewer focuses on the eyes and profile of the main head.

Signed with a CW monogram in the bottom right corner.

Ukrainian-born British Jewish artist Clara Birnberg (1894-1989) moved to London when she was 6 years old. She later married artist Stephen Weinstein and they both changed their surname to the anglicised 'Winsten'. Winsten studied at the Slade School of Art from 1910-12, with David Bomberg, who she had a relationship with. She was the only female member of the influential 'Whitechapel Boys' group of artists and poets, and was the only female exhibitor at the important 1914 post-Impressionist exhibition "Twentieth Century Art: A Review of Modern Movements" held in 1914 at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. She was close to George Bernard Shaw, for whom she illustrated a couple of books, and she portrayed many notables, including Dmitri Shostakovich, Benjamin Britten and Mahatma Gandhi.

Condition
Crumples, minor tears and some losses to the edges, as photographed and consistent with age and being stored in a portfolio. A couple of spots of foxing in the bottom right corner. The damage to the edges can easily be hidden when correctly mounted and framed as the first image shows.

Paper: 25.1cm wide, 36.4cm high.

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