Helen Saunders (1885-1963), Vorticist composition (Black and Khaki) c 1915 Drawing . The Courtauld, London. **© Estate of Helen Saunders.**

‘I don’t really paint ‘in order to keep well’, but rather try to keep well ‘in order to paint.’’
Helen Saunders

I recently attended an exhibition of the work of Helen Saunders. (The Courtauld, London, until 29 January 2023)

Saunders was one of the pioneers of abstract art in Britain, a founding member of the radical Vorticist movement. She painted images that celebrated the modern world with vibrant colours, harsh lines and jagged edges. Yet the show is a small affair, as so very little of her work survives. This is a melancholy tale of talent unrecognised and unrewarded.

Saunders was born in Ealing in 1865, the daughter of a solicitor, and she studied at a number of London art schools. Her early work took a post-Impressionist approach – simplifying, abstracting, flattening – rather beautiful depictions of a friend’s face in profile, a mother and child, a solitary tree.

**Helen Saunders. Portrait of a woman, c1913. Drawing. The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust). © Estate of Helen Saunders.**

Saunders became friends with the artist Wyndham Lewis, who in 1914 established Vorticism, a modernist movement that exalted the dynamism of urban life and the machine age. She signed its manifesto in the first issue of BLAST magazine, deliberately misspelling her surname to avoid embarrassing her conservative family. She contributed two drawings and a poem to the second issue the following year and participated in two Vorticist exhibitions, in London and New York.

Saunders’ work of this period displayed the dynamic geometry, bold lines and bright colours typical of Vorticism. A long-limbed figure is fired from the barrel of a gun. A giant frees himself from his bonds, sending little people scampering in all directions. A nude woman with a mask-like face lies in a hammock, completely distraught. There’s a mysterious figure with an ovoid head, claw fingers and an orange halo. There’s an electric evocation of jazz music. There are energetic abstract designs, fizzing with life.

During the First World War Saunders worked in the government censor’s office. She also acted as Lewis’ unpaid secretary while he was away on active service - renting out his rooms, typing his manuscripts, mounting drawings that he sent home from the front.

**Helen Saunders. Copyright The Estate of Helen Saunders. © Estate of Helen Saunders.**

After the war Lewis turned his back on the ‘bleak and empty geometrics ‘of Vorticism. And at the same time he turned his back on Saunders. She was deeply hurt. What’s more, the brutal conflict had dented her own enthusiasm for modernity. And so she decided to move on in her art, adopting a more realist style.

Saunders withdrew from the male dominated creative scene to paint still lifes, landscapes and portraits. Frustrated when galleries rejected her work, she exhibited only sporadically.

‘I am still a solitary by nature... What I fear more than anything else is the monotonous stampede of other people’s thoughts through my mind when my own thoughts are too tired and dissipated to give battle to the invaders.’

Helen Saunders’s *Hammock* (around 1913-14). The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust); © Estate of Helen Saunders

In 1940 much of Saunders’ work was destroyed when her flat in Holborn was bombed in the Blitz. And in the years that followed her contribution to the birth of abstract art in Britain was gradually marginalised, not least because Lewis claimed all the credit.

‘Vorticism, in fact, was what I, personally, did, and said, at a certain period.’
Wyndham Lewis in 1956

Perhaps Saunders was also a victim of her own modesty.

‘I feel myself that I have had some of the best luck in the world and some perhaps of the worst! But NO – other people have had far worse misfortunes.’

On New Year’s Day 1963 the 77 year old Saunders died of accidental coal gas poisoning in her top floor flat in Holborn. It had been a very cold night.

If you pop upstairs from the Saunders exhibition, you can see ‘Praxitella’, a 1921 portrait by Wyndham Lewis of his partner of the time, film critic Iris Barry.

For some years scholars have suspected that this portrait was painted over another work. It has an uneven texture and traces of red appear through cracks in the surface. It’s not unusual for artists to re-use a canvas - perhaps they are dissatisfied with a previous painting, or they’re just being economical with materials.

When recently Courtauld students Rebecca Chipkin and Helen Kohn applied X-ray technology to ‘Praxitella,’ they found an abstract composition lying underneath. But this was not a Lewis work. Rather it matched a Saunders painting from 1915, ‘Atlantic City.’ This piece had been reproduced in black and white in BLAST, but had long since been thought lost.

The X-ray of Lewis’ *Praxitella* beside a reproduction of Saunders’ *Atlantic City* © the Courtauld / Estate of Helen Saunders

The Courtauld has used technology to create a partial colour reconstruction of ‘Atlantic City.’ We are presented with a fragmented modern metropolis, a collision of boardwalks, coastlines and hotel buildings, in bright greens, reds and yellows. It really is quite striking. And also profoundly sad.

Why did Lewis paint over Saunders’ work? He wasn’t short of money at the time. Was it arrogance, jealousy or just plain spite? We can only guess.

We may recognise something of this injustice in the world of commerce.

In our field credit tends to be apportioned at awards ceremonies, in case studies and in corporate folklore. Heroes are identified, critical moments are located and a narrative is composed. In the course of this process, it’s not unusual for there to be a subtle rewriting of history, a change of emphasis, an adjustment of the cast list. And sometimes success is attributed to an individual ‘genius’, rather than to the broader team.

We may feel that we’re not bothered by this; that there’s no point arguing about the past; that we should keep our eyes on the future. We may wish to keep our own counsel. But it is a responsibility of leadership to ensure that credit is distributed, not to the loudest voices and the sharpest elbows, but according to merit and fact. We should never allow anyone’s contribution to be painted over.

'All I've ever wanted was an honest life,
To be the person that I really am inside.
All I've ever needed was a little time to grow,
A little time to understand all the things that I know,
So I can listen to you lovingly instead of getting up to go.
Some people take a little more time to grow.
Right when you have it all figured out,
Life comes to throw you another doubt.
But my head's up high, and I ain't got nothing but time,
To work at living an honest life.’
Courtney Marie Andrews, 'Honest Life'

No. 397