Beschreibung:

[James Joyce (1882-1941)] – Frank Budgen (1882-1971)
Study of James Joyce, c.1919
A portrait of Joyce executed during the writing of Ulysses by his close friend the artist Frank Budgen. Budgen and Joyce had first met in Zurich in 1918, when Budgen was working for the British Consulate's Ministry of Information in order to subsidise his career as an artist; the two men swiftly became close friends, meeting almost daily to walk and talk, frequently discussing Ulysses at length, and a portrait of Joyce was proposed. This is one of a series of preparatory drawings that Budgen made (another, now at the James Joyce Centre, Dublin, is reproduced on the endpapers of Budgen's James Joyce and the Making of "Ulysses" and Other Writings (London: 1972), and another, now at The Rosenbach, was sold in these rooms on 2 December 2004). The painted portrait is one of the most celebrated of Joyce, and was reproduced as the frontispiece of Budgen's James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses (London: 1934).
signed 'BUDGEN' (upper left)
charcoal on paper
5 x 7 ½ in. (12.7 x 19.3 cm.)
Provenance: Frank Budgen (1882-1971; by descent to:) – Joan Budgen – sold Henry Aldridge & Son, 27 January 2024, lot 152.