SOLDTags: Rudolf Sauter pencil Portrait watercolour men war work 1.PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST World War II Paintings by British Artists
Provenance: The Artist's Studio
Exhibited: WW2 - War Pictures by British Artists, Morley College London, 28 October -23 November 2016, cat 29.
Literature: WW2 - War Pictures by British Artists, Edited by Sacha Llewellyn & Paul Liss, July 2016, cat 29, page 67.
Llewellyn, Sacha, and Paul Liss. Portrait of an Artist. Liss Llewellyn, 2021, p.316.
Sauter—a German-born artist, poet, cultural observer and nephew of the famed novelist John Galsworthy—was interned at Alexandra Palace as an ‘enemy alien’ during WW1, from March 1918 until August 1919. After the war, he became a naturalized British citizen, and during WWII he enlisted as a Local Army Welfare Officer in the Eastern Command, covering East Anglia and the Central Midland Counties. His duties across this region allowed him to continue painting. His resulting work, which focused on a variety of subjects symbolizing the realities and physical force of the nation at war, stood in stark contrast to the images of captivity he created during the previous war. Although he was never an official war artist, Rudolf documented Britain at war as accurately and meaningfully as the productions of these contemporaries.
We are grateful to Jeffrey S. Reznick for allowing us to quote from his forthcoming book, War and Peace in the Worlds of Rudolf H. Sauter: A Cultural History of a Creative Life (Anthem Press, 2022). This is the first book to examine Sauter critically, revealing him out of the shadow of his famous uncle as a creative figure in his own right who produced an intriguing body of work, including the paintings shown here, other self-portraits, and many more artistic and literary works encompassing a variety of themes.
