Beschreibung:

λ CAREL WEIGHT (BRITISH 1908-1997) SKETCH FOR 'AN EPISODE IN THE CHILDHOOD OF A GENIUS' Oil on panel Signed to label (attached verso) 43.5 x 65cm (17 x 25½ in.) Painted in 1932. Provenance: J. Beddington, Director of Wildenstein, Private Collection Exhibited: London, Arts Council of Great Britain, Four Contemporary British Painters, (Leonard Appelbee, Claude Rogers, Ruskin Spear Carel Weight), 1947, no. 27 'At this time his mother told him a story of vital importance to his development as an artist, As a girl, she had clambered out of an upstairs window and made her way along a narrow, projecting ledge to a neighbour's windowsill, tempted there by the bright blooms in a window-box. People in the street saw her and were terribly worried about her falling, but somehow they got her back.' It introduced another line - humorous fantasy - and he developed it with gusto. It was to become a constant in so many purlieus of Carel Weight's world. 'That gave me an idea for a picture. I moved the scene to the outside of a pub, and substituted a young lad who'd climbed up the inn sign and perched himself precariously on top. He was causing great consternation not only to people in the pub but also among the crowd who'd gathered outside'. - see R.V. Weight, Carel Weight, 1994, page 21 The painting , for which this is the study, was exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1933 (No 100) and was instrumental in securing the artist's first teaching job. The painter Henry Carr,, then head of Beckenham School of Art, saw it, liked it, and offered Weight a 2-day-a-week teaching position at the school, Weight accepted and continued to teach at Beckenham until called up for war service in 1942. - see Mervyn Levy Carel Weight, 1986, page 45.