Lot 42: Humphrey Jennings (1907-1950)

Tableau Parisien
signed and dated 'H. Jennings 1938-9' (on the canvas-overlap) and signed again, inscribed and dated again 'H. Jennings "Tableau Parisien" 1938-9' (on the stretcher)
oil on canvas
20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm.)

London, Hamet Gallery, Britain's Contribution to Surrealism 1930-40, November 1971, no. 50. Paris, Galerie 1900-2000, Les Enfants d'Alice, La Peinture Surréaliste en Angleterre, 1982, no. 68. London, Riverside Studios, Humphrey Jennings Film Maker, Painter and Poet 1907-1950, January - February 1982, no. 11.
Milan, Palazzo Reale, I Surrealisti, May - September 1989, not numbered.
Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Die Surrealisten, November 1989-Feburary 1990, not numbered.
Finland, Retretti Art Centre, Surrealismi - Surrealism, May - September 1987, not numbered. Aldeburgh, Peter Pears Gallery, Festival Exhibition, June 2006, no. 13.

Exhibition catalogue, Britain's Contribution to Surrealism 1930-40 London, Hamet Gallery, November 1971, no. 50, illustrated. Exhibition catalogue, Les Enfants d'Alice, La Peinture Surréliste en Angleterre, Paris, Galerie 1900-2000, 1982, p. 53, no. 68, illustrated.
Mary-Lou Jennings (ed.), Humphrey Jennings: Film Maker, Painter, Poet, British Film Institute, 1982, no. 21, illustrated.
M. Remy, British Surrealism, Hants, 1999, p. 51, illustrated.
Exhibition catalogue, Surrealismi - Surrealism, Finland, Retretti Art Centre, May-September 1987, p. 60, pl. 92, illustrated.
Exhibition catalogue, I Surrealisti, Milan, Palazzo Reale, May - September 1989, p. 465, illustrated.

Jennings commented, 'Some years ago (say 1930-1934) I bought in Cambridge a few 19th Century etchings in Paris: thinking vaguely that they reminded me of the areas on the left bank (Quai Voltaire etc.) which were gradually being knocked down - I never studied them in detail. To roughly the same period belongs a detailed study of Baudelaire's poems of which the sections named 'Tableaux Parisiens' have always particularly moved me, representing a nostalgia also for Paris - and Le Cygne in particular. Reading poetry in Paris I connect with a cafe on the right bank - where I first read Rimbaud - opposite the Place Voltaire - facing the Louvre. Le Cygne makes a definite reference to the destruction of the Place Carrousel (in 1848 and onwards) for the rebuilding of the Louvre:

Andromaque, je pense ' vous! Ce petit fleuve,
Pauvre et triste miroir ou jadis resplendit
L'immense majesti de vos douleurs de veuve,
Ce Siamois menteur qui par vos pleurs grandit,

Ah ficonde soudain ma mimoire fertile,
Comme je traversais le nouveau Carrousel.
Le vieux Paris n'est pas (la forme d'une ville
change plus vite, hilas! que le coeur d'un mortel). (Exhibition catalogue, Humphrey Jennings: Film-Maker, Painter, Poet, London, 1982, p. 21.)

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