Footnotes

Provenance
The Artist, from whom acquired by
Walter William Wadsworth, 1933
Thence by family descent to the present owner
Private Collection, U.K.

Exhibited
London, The Leicester Galleries, Tempera Paintings by Edward Wandsworth, November 1926, cat.no.13
London, Tate Gallery, Edward Wadsworth Memorial Exhibition, 2 February-19 March 1951, cat.no.10 (as Quayside)
Bradford, Cartwright Hall, Edward Wadsworth 1889-1949, 12 October 1989-14 January 1990, cat.no.90 (as Quayside/St. Tropez III); this exhibition travelled to London, Camden Arts Centre, 14 March-22 April

Literature
Barbara Wadsworth, Edward Wadsworth, A Painter's Life, Michael Russell, Wiltshire, 1989, cat.no.W/A73
Jonathan Black, Edward Wadsworth; Form, Feeling and Calculation, Philip Wilson, London, 2005, p.177, cat.no.216 (ill.b&w, as St Tropez III/Quayside/Mimi)

St Tropez III belongs to a series of six similarly titled variations all alike in construct and painted in 1925, with five of the grouping exhibited the following November at the Leicester Galleries. Each of these compositions guide the viewer's attention from a private enclosed sanctum, through tasselled and baroque curtains to the dazzling quayside beyond. Dating from a period in which the artist's method altered considerably (employing photography rather than preliminary sketches and the introduction of home-prepared tempera) these works combine two key components of Wadsworth's concern; nautical subject matter (first explored in vorticist compositions of 1914 and 1915 and later returning to it for the long running series collectively known as 'The Marine Still-Lives') and theatrical staging.

This series is amongst the fruits borne from a particularly interesting period in Wadsworth's life and one which was to prove fundamental to his work henceforth. Following the death of his father in 1921 Wadsworth received a substantial inheritance which gave him the financial means to paint on a full time basis and to travel extensively. In April of 1923 Wadsworth, accompanied by his wife Fanny and their chauffeur 'Nobby', set off in their Delage Tourer for an extended trip south through France, along the Côte d'Azur and into Italy. The couple established favourite towns and ports such as La Rochelle and Marseilles, which they would return to again in years to come. One such discovery was the port of St. Tropez, not to become fashionable until the end of the decade it was one of the first places Wadsworth made a repeat visit to in the summer of 1924. It was this second experience of the town that would, upon his return to London, result in the St. Tropez series, of which the present example is the first to be presented at auction.

Walter William Wadsworth (the 'WWW' of the inscription) was the artist's first cousin on his father's side and an avid collector of Wadsworth's work. He and his wife Theo remained close with Edward and Fanny for many years and would play host to the couple for extended visits. In the biography of her father, Barbara Wadsworth remarks that 'Walter was a warm-hearted, intelligent and enthusiastic man ... he had interests, mostly intellectual, in all sorts of spheres, including the publication of The New Age Encyclopaedia' (Barbara Wadsworth, Edward Wadsworth, A Painter's Life, Michael Russell, Wiltshire, 1989, p.109).