Lot 1244 , § Josselin Bodley (1893-1974) Constantine (Pont de Sidi Rached Bridge, Constantine, Algeria), 18 x 15in.

§ Josselin Bodley (1893-1974)
oil on canvas,
'Constantine' (Pont de Sidi Rached Bridge, Constantine, Algeria),
signed, titled and dated 1928,
18 x 15in.
Estimate £500-800

Exhibited Galerie Bernheim Jeune, Paris - 'Peintures de l'Afrique du Nord, du Pays Basque et de Venise' 5-16 November, 1928.

Josselin Bodley (1893-1974)

As much as any English artist in the first half of the twentieth century, Josselin Reginald Courtney Bodley's life and most resonant art were defined by his experiences in and near France. Though little has been written on his distinctive artistic contribution, it was moulded by a poetic appreciation of ancient architecture and its surrounds, by direct exposure to developments in painting in Europe refracted through a refined English sensibility - and by intense exposure to war. His most evocative and effective work synthesises tradition and stylistic modernity in magically realist visions of historical remnants and rural settings, rendered with exquisite care in a controlled and characteristic palette, and infused with a spectral, deeply atmospheric sense of the past. In the words of The Times art critic (4 November, 1933), his paintings offer a 'character that is very pleasing [and are] markedly linear in composition, sharply drawn, and executed in pale colours of great delicacy.' War and other sometimes dark histories leave their marks still, one feels, in the haunted presence of these buildings, in the absence of figures and the charged sense of place, in the typically bare trees and silent, unyielding skies. Yet there is a great tranquillity too - a secular equivalence to the calm rapture of early Flemish painting perhaps - an immanence opposing the ravages of time.

Without the continual support of new books, articles and exhibitions, the cultural memory is surprisingly short and, perhaps because he was not prolific and his paintings surface only rarely, Bodley's achievements are now largely overlooked. However, in the inter-war period, he was considered amongst the most promising artists of his generation, a painter who bridged a gap between the still vibrant avant-garde approaches issuing from France and a typically guarded English insularity. Though standing apart from important artistic groups emerging in Britain in the 1930s, he was at this time represented by four of the most adventurous galleries in the Western world; by Bernheim Jeune in Paris who held five exhibitions of his work between 1928 and 1934; by Leicester Galleries in London with whom he exhibited first alongside Henry Moore in 1933, and then also in 1935 and 1937; by Marie Harriman Gallery in New York and by Alfred Flechtheim in Berlin. His paintings were purchased by museums across Europe and the USA.

Unusually for an English painter shaped by French artistic modernity, he was also a decorated war hero. Enlisting first as a Second Lieutenant in The King's Royal Rifle Corps at the outbreak in 1914 he remained militarily active throughout much of WWI - despite being wounded at Ypres in 1915 - leaving the army in 1919 with a Military Cross and the rank of Captain. His earliest surviving paintings date from this period and their atmospheric subject matter of ruined buildings and blasted leafless trees on the frontline prefigure much of the still, melancholic resonance of his finest mature work (see 'Shelley Farm, St. Eloi' and 'Polygon Wood, Ypres' at BBC Your Paintings / Josselin Bodley). Later in life he also received one of France's highest civilian honours - for artistic achievements and cultural activities - becoming a Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur.

The artist was born into a patrician family, whose lineage included the sixteenth century founder of Oxford's Bodleain Library, Sir Thomas Bodley, and was the second son of John Edward Courtney Bodley. His father, a college and masonic friend of Oscar Wilde's at Balliol, worked first as secretary to the Liberal Minister Sir Charles Dilke but - after Dilke's political hopes were ruined in a famous divorce scandal - gradually emerged as the period's most important English historian of France. Through his father's wide circle of influential contacts and those of his brother Ronald and his sister Ava, Bodley was linked to some of the most important political and cultural figures of his generation. Ronald became a noted Arabist - recording his time amongst the tribesmen of North Africa in a life that reads somewhat like that of T. E. Lawrence in the Middle East - and Ava was married first to the diplomat Ralph Wigram and then to John Anderson, Churchill's Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer during WWII.

Much of the artist's early life was spent in France with his father, visiting the great and the good and unconsciously absorbing the atmosphere of the architectural riches of the French countryside. School at Eton followed this privileged but nomadic boyhood, after which Bodley left England for a garret flat in Paris, intent on a career as an artist - though such hopes were postponed by the outbreak of WWI. He returned again afterwards, and paintings of the 1920s can be seen experimenting with and evolving through his direct exposure to the various competing styles of the period. Works in this phase manifest subtle shades of influence from post impressionism (Lot ??), decorative cubism, purism (Lot ??) and surrealism. As his work developed through the 1930s - when the artist was based in England - there is a strong sense of something equivalent to the New Objectivity in German painting (see in particular examples of Franz Radziwill's work such as 'Church in the Vendee' 1932). It was a clear and modern vision with technical and formal links to Edward Wadsworth's tranquil harbour paintings of the 1920s, to the contemporaneous landscape work of Harry Epworth Allen and particularly to the development of Tristram Hillier's less overtly surrealistic and architectural compositions of the 1930s.

This small collection of eloquent and evocative works - depictions of the living past that still carry great pictorial and poetic charge - offers a long overdue insight into the oeuvre of an original, talented and noteworthy artist.


Oil on original canvas in good clean condition, canvas remains tight, no faults noted to the paint, signed, titled and dated lower right, in a painted and gilt stepped wood frame which has a few minor surface scratches.


Descriptions provided in both printed and on-line catalogue formats do not include condition reports. The absence of a condition statement does not imply that the lot is in perfect condition or completely free from wear and tear, imperfections or the effects of aging. Interested bidders are strongly encouraged to request a condition report on any lots upon which they intend to bid, prior to placing a bid. All transactions are governed by Gorringes Conditions of Sale.

Sold for £650