As with Thomas, Bridgman was paid a retainer and appears in many guises over 18 years: as working men in dramatic street scenes acrobats clad in sheeny pink satin stripped to the waist, hair tangled with vine leaves, as Dionysus in the high camp of transfiguration. Philpot draws Bridgman as a malevolent beauty, mesmerised by both the face and the body. From 1924, a striking drawing in red chalk presents George Bridgman, a young Caucasian man with unruly red hair, a broken nose and an angular, heavy-boned face from which gaze eyes of otherworldly pallor. Thomas was not Philpot’s only long-term model. A profile against a red background is a glorious, richly coloured character study in which the contours of Thomas’s face are described in licks of deep rose and indigo. The elongated, statuesque Head of a Jamaican Man, Heroic Scale (Henry Thomas) (1937) brims with emotion. Philpot paints him adoringly, relishing the particularity of his face.
He is also the subject of studies, drawings and paintings in his own right, sometimes named, though often not. Philpot painted him in character as Balthazar (1929) and Harlequin (1937), and his body was used as an anonymous arrangement of limbs (male or female) in paintings of acrobats or classical subjects. At first he was paid a retainer: later he joined Philpot’s household in a combined role as model and servant. Thomas worked with Philpot for eight years, sitting for him until a few weeks before the artist’s death in 1937. Philpot’s favourite Black model was a Jamaican-born man named Henry Thomas. Photograph: Courtesy of Richard Osborn Fine Art Positioned against the tubular furniture of a chic interior, Zaïre is the acme of handsome sophistication in black tie and pomade.Īsymmetry … Philpot’s portrait Tom Whiskey (M Julien Zaïre), 1931-32. In Paris, he painted two portraits of Julien Zaïre, a Martiniquan who performed in cabaret as Tom Whiskey. Some were performers: Portrait of Paul Robeson as Othello (1930) was rediscovered during research for this exhibition (an earlier painting of the African American tenor Roland Hayes singing is still unaccounted for). His interest in Black subjects was unusual for its time. Indebted to Picasso, Cocteau and Matisse, Philpot’s new style was less appreciated in London. Influenced by developments in Paris and Berlin, in 1930 he experimented with modernism, painting the chrome, glass and glow of the transforming city. A practising Roman Catholic and gay, mesmerised by performance and masquerade, he allowed his interest in the male nude to play out in (at times awkward) symbolist works on classical themes. Philpot appears an artist – and a man – pulled in several directions.