Lot 185: POWYS, THEODORE FRANCIS (1875-1953, novelist and short-story writer)

PORTRAIT BY FREDERICK CARTER (1883-1967), etching, proof copy with extensive pencil additions, head and shoulders, signed by Carter below the image, framed and glazed, size of aperture 9½ x 8 inches (24 x 20 cm), overall size 16¼ x 14 inches (41.5 x 36 cm), [1934]

Frederick Carter was an English painter, etcher and writer of great imagination. He abandoned an early career as a surveyor and engineer, and, mainly self-taught, studied in the great galleries of both London and Paris. Between 1907 and 1934 he created an oeuvre of 139 etchings and drypoint engravings. Carter also supported himself as a writer and was a leading scholar in the fields of religion and mysticism. His circle of friends included the poet W. B. Yeats, the sculptor Jacob Epstein, and the novelists T. F. Powys and D. H. Lawrence. Frederick Carter's earliest etchings deal mainly with his interest in the Italian Commedia dell' Arte; soon after, however, his powerful mysticism and imagination begin to dominate. Most of his etched portraits date from the early 1930s and are masterworks of form and structure. Frederick Carter was elected an Associate of the Royal Engravers. Both the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum have collections of his etchings and engravings.