Jewad Selim

(Iraq, 1919-1961)

Still life with Statuette

Footnotes

Provenance:
Property form a private collection, Dubai
Property from a private collection, Doha
Formerly in a private family collection, Baghdad

Exhibited:
Jewad Selim, Solo Exhibition in the House of Nizar Ali Jawdat, Baghdad, Iraq, 1950

Published:
Nima Sagharchi and Zaineb Jewad Selim, Jewad Selim: Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings and Sculptures, 2025, Skira Editore, P.112 (catalogue number JSP.43)

A rare Still Life from Jewad Selim's London period, exhibited at his first solo exhibition in 1950, and the only known painting depicting one of the artist's own works, a black Statuette

"This still life is one of the few surviving works from Jewad Selim's London period (1946–49), a decisive chapter in his artistic development. After formative spells in Paris and Rome, it was London that most deeply shaped the mature style he would go on to define.

Much of what he created there was left behind and lost, but this painting returned with him to Baghdad and was included in his first solo exhibition in 1950. It is also unique within his oeuvre as the only painting in which he records another of his own works: a black ebony statuette, carved in the early 1940s and now lost, preserved here as evidence of his evolving artistic identity."

Painted in 1948 during his London years, Still Life belongs to one of the most joyful and formative chapters in Jewad Selim's life. It was at this time, while studying at the Slade School of Fine Art, that Jewad reached a rare period of equilibrium: immersed in study, companionship, and artistic discovery. London in the late 1940s offered him both liberation and discipline: an exposure to European modernism after the war years in Baghdad, and the intellectual community of artists who would shape his creative philosophy for years to come.

It was also the period he met Lorna, the English art student who would later become his wife, and whose influence and partnership proved decisive in his life and art. Their relationship blossomed against a backdrop of renewal and promise. As Zainab Selim later wrote in her biography of her father:

"The summer of 1948 and his third year at the Slade was a particularly happy time for Jewad. He had been living in sometimes unsatisfactory digs in different parts of London, but in the summer of 1948, he had the opportunity to rent a spacious flat with Lorna and another couple in an attractive area of London called Westbourne Gardens. Lorna obtained her Diploma in Fine Arts in June, and to gain degree status, she registered to study for the Art Teacher's Diploma in the following academic year.

As a result of his illness, Jewad was awarded an extra year from the Iraqi authorities to complete his studies, but they had not banked on Jewad's work ethic. Somehow, he managed to pass his second-year exams in June 1948 and registered for his third year in October 1948 to study sculpture and painting. He also took up pottery lessons. Jewad was aiming to graduate according to the original schedule so that he could use the extra year granted to him to pursue postgraduate studies at the Slade, but alas, this was not to be in the end."

Within this atmosphere of creative abundance, Still Life stands out as a deeply personal and historically significant work. Amid the table top arrangement of objects sits a small black ebony statuette, a sculpture that Jewad had executed in the early 1940s, before leaving Baghdad. Its presence in this painting reveals that he had carried it with him across continents: to London and back again, suggesting its profound sentimental and artistic value. The statuette, now lost, reappears only once more, blurred but recognisable, in a later photograph of his Baghdad studio.

Whether the ebony figure depicts a woman or an embracing couple is uncertain, yet its inclusion here, tenderly painted among the objects on his table, offers a rare glimpse of the sculptor reflecting on his own creation. Remarkably, Still Life is the only known painting in which Jewad depicts one of his own works, transforming an intimate still life into a self-referential dialogue between his two disciplines: painting and sculpture.

Beyond its aesthetic delicacy, the work captures a fleeting moment of contentment before the challenges and triumphs that awaited him in Iraq. It is a testament to a period when Jewad's artistic voice matured in harmony with his personal happiness.