[arabiannights]

Ссылка на большое изображение известной (и загадочной) картины Тьюка, о которой я уже писала в сообществе.

Генри Скотт Тьюк. Т.Э.Лоуренс. 1921-1922 (?)
И отрывок из книги Чарльза Гросвенора "Иконография. Портреты Т.Э.Лоуренса", посвященный этой картине.
HENRY SCOTT TUKE (1858-1929)Painter in oils and watercolors of portraits, seascapes, and nudes. Born in York on 12 June 1858. Studied at the Slade School 1875-80, in Italy 1880-81, and in the Paris studio of J.P. Laurens 1881-83. Member NEAC 1886. Won 1st Gold Medal at Munich in 1894 for Sailors Playing Cards. Elected ARA in 1900 and RA 1914. Chosen ARWS 1904 and RWS 1911. Lived in Cornwall and in 1914 moved to Swanpool, Falmouth. Led a solitary life and painted a number of scenes of nude boys bathing. Died near Falmouth on 13 March 1929.
MEDIUM: Oil-on-canvas
DIMENSIONS: 21" x 17"
DATE: 1922
LOCATION: Clouds Hill, Dorset
ILLUSTRATED: Page 56
No portrait of Lawrence is more of an enigma than this painting by Henry Scott Tuke. The work seemingly illustrates one of the most uncertain episodes of Lawrence's life: his purported enlistment in 1905, after a familial crisis, in a battalion of the Royal Garrison Artillery in Cornwall. Hard evidence for the enlistment has yet to publicly surface, and the painting seems in some of its details to simply add to the controversy.
Tuke, who lived and worked for most of his life in the Falmouth area of Cornwall, kept thorough records of his paintings and their particulars. This painting is listed in Tuke's published Registers as "R987 Picture of "Gray" (68); the quotation marks seemingly indicating that the name is a pseudonym. There it is listed, along with a companion piece of young boys bathing in the surf, as having been sold to R.F.C Scott.* Both pictures were in turn sold to "Gray" for a minimal sum upon the death of Scott, sometime between 1922 and 1929. "Gray" must ultimately translate to "Lawrence," as both this painting and its companion, which was later given by Lawrence to Mrs. Clare Sydney Smith, were unquestionably in Lawrence's possession by 1929. (69)
Both "Gray" and its companion piece are listed in the Registers as preparatory oil sketches for the much larger work, Morning Splendour, painted in the summer of 1921. Yet the inscription on "Gray", which appears at the lower right, reads "H.S. Tuke 1922." As a preparatory piece, "Gray" should have been painted before Morning Splendour: at the latest sometime early in the summer of 1921; and there is no evidence of Lawrence being in Cornwall at that time. That is not the case, however, for 1922.
Lawrence took two weeks' respite from his Colonial Office duties in June of 1922, according to a letter he wrote to Eric Kennington on the second of July. (70) In a letter of the same date to Robert Graves, Lawrence expressed that he was just "back from Cornwall on Friday [June 30]." (71) While there is no concrete evidence of Lawrence meeting Tuke at this time, a meeting is a distinct possibility. However, even if the two did meet and a portrait sitting took place, the "1922," while then accurate, would remain confusing: how could a preparatory sketch be painted a year after the piece for which it was a study> An answer may be found in a practice Tuke sometimes employed.
Tuke was known, on occasion, to alter his paintings. Most often this was the case in paintings depicting nudes, in an effort to conceal the identity of the model. In these works, new heads were added to existing bodies to guarantee anonymity. It seems possible that perhaps Tuke altered the head in "Gray," changing it to that of Lawrence in June of 1922, a year after the study's initial completion. Noting Tuke's propensity for keeping accurate records, it would seem that such a significant alteration, done a year later, would necessitate a revised inscription: hence a revision from "1921" to "1922" .The inscription on the painting does in fact appear to have been painted over, or at least altered, causing the resultant number to look somewhat indistinct.
Confirmation of this idea may be found in a letter written by Lawrence in November of 1928. Writing from Waziristan Lawrence essentially rejected, for several reasons, a request for a portrait sitting. He did, however, leave an opening:

But if you are like the artist who said, "Do sit: I really can't afford a proper model..." then by all means. He worked what was left of his study of me into a beach picture; after giving me a new head, several sizes smaller. (72)

This refers, obviously, to the Tuke painting. The letter confirms that Lawrence's head was added on to the picture. While Lawrence was thirtyfour years old in 1922, he still possessed what he in 1929 described to Mrs. Liddell Hart as his "juvenile head." (73) Tuke, having painted numerous heads of young boys, was probably able to adapt Lawrence's appearance to seem even younger: to the age of the youthful Artillery recruit in "Gray."
Therefore it is certain that the bulk of the painting "Gray" was not painted in 1905, but rather 1921. It also seems certain that Lawrence's head was added on to the piece, probably in June, 1922. Still, questions remain. What did Lawrence mean when he wrote "what was left of his study of me"? Had Lawrence met Tuke before 1922? Could the two have met in 1905, the year of the purported enlistment? Did Lawrence in fact enlist as a youth at all? If not, why did Tuke choose to paint Lawrence's head into "Gray"? Is the painting the source of the enlistment story or a remembrance of it? And what of the name "Gray" itself?: was it perhaps the pseudonym under which Lawrence enlisted in the Royal Artillery as a teen-ager? Answers to these questions would be pure conjecture at this point. Further conclusions must await additional evidence.
Lawrence was apparently fond of the art of Tuke, as he expressed to his friend in the Tank Corps Alec Dixon. (74) Lawrence's brother Arnold, however, felt the fondness emanated purely from this one painting. (75)
*It is most probable that "R.F.C. Scott" is itself a pseudonym. Mr. David Wainright, a Tuke scholar, and author with Kate Dinn of the forthcoming biography Henry Scott Tuke: Marine Painter 1858-1929, has searched extensively in the Public Records Office for notice of "Scott's" death and has found nothing. Mr. B.D. Price, in his fascinating unpublished essay The "Picture of 'Gray,'" has reasoned that "Scott" represents Sydney Lomer (1880-1926), a collector of a number of Tuke paintings.

68) B.D. Price, ed., The Registers of Henry Scott Tuke, (1858-1929), (Falmouth: Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society, 1983).
69) Clare Sydney Smith, The Golden Reign, (London: Cassel, 1940), p. 166. The work is reproduced in the same volume opposite page 172.
70) T.E Lawrence, Letter to Eric Kennington, 2 July 1922, Original letter at HRHRC.
71) Robert Graves, TE. Lawrence to His Biographers, I, p. 20.
72) T.E. Lawrence, Letter to Elsie Falcon, November 1928, Original letter in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
73) T.E. Lawrence, Letter to Mrs. Liddell Hart, 18 September 1929, Original letter in the Hart family.
70) Alec Dixon essay, Friends, p. 325.
75) A.W. Lawrence, Letter to the National Trust, n.d..
GROSVENOR, CHARLES, An Iconography: The Portraits Of T. E. Lawrence, 1988, pp114-117, 123-124.
Также увидела в сети русский перевод рассказа Хью Давенпорта «Синева августа».
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