Oil paint on canvas
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/victor-pasmore-1744" aria-label="More by Victor Pasmore" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Victor Pasmore</a>
Lamplight
Purchased 1941
actions: postures and motions
adults
artist, painter
arts and entertainment
Blood, Wendy
book - non-specific
domestic
family
flower
furnishings
heating and lighting
husband
individuals: female
interior - non-specific
interiors
jug
leisure and pastimes
light / lamp
man
named individuals
objects
Pasmore, Victor
Pasmore, Wendy
people
plants and flowers
portraits
reading
reading, writing, printed matter
recreational activities
self-portraits
sitting
society
table
vessels and containers
wife
woman
work and occupations
<p>This intimate interior painted during the wartime blackout shows Pasmore and his wife. In the 1940s Pasmore painted many pure still lifes in which the painted marks are true both to observation and to his love of exploring form itself. This can be seen here in the treatment of the lamp, jug and book. Of the founders of the Euston Road School, Pasmore was the most strongly drawn to the sensuous qualities of paint and colour, not least those found in French art of the nineteenth century.</p><p><em>Gallery label, August 2004</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
1 May 2000 – 19 September 2001
2001-09-19
1 May 2001 – 19 September 2001
2001-09-19
2001-05-01
Tate Modern (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/
2000-05-01
Intimate Lives
Collection based display
20 February 2007 – 24 June 2007
2007-06-24
20 February 2007 – 24 June 2007
2007-06-24
2007-02-20
Museum of the Home (London, UK)
http://www.geffrye-museum.org.uk
2007-02-20
Homes and Gardens Part 3: The Twentieth Century 1914-1960
Loan-out
26 November 2016 – 11 June 2017
2017-06-11
26 November 2016 – 19 February 2017
2017-02-19
2016-11-26
Djanogly Art Gallery (Nottingham, UK)
11 March 2017 – 11 June 2017
2017-06-11
2017-03-11
Pallant House Gallery (Chichester, UK)
2016-11-26
The Subjective Factor: The Art of Victor Pasmore (c.1929-1969)
Loan-out
1 September 2025 – 25 April 2027
2027-04-25
1 September 2025 – 31 December 2025
2025-12-31
2025-09-01
CaixaForum Madrid (Madrid, Spain)
1 February 2026 – 31 May 2026
2026-05-31
2026-02-01
CaixaForum Barcelona (Barcelona, Spain)
http://www3.lacaixa.es
1 August 2026 – 30 November 2026
2026-11-30
2026-08-01
CaixaForum Zaragoza (Saragossa, Spain)
10 December 2026 – 25 April 2027
2027-04-25
2026-12-10
External
2025-09-01
Self Portraits
Loan-out
Lamplight
support: 635 × 762 mm
frame: 869 × 1002 × 120 mm
Purchased 1941
<p>This intimate interior painted during the wartime blackout shows Pasmore and his wife. In the 1940s Pasmore painted many pure <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/s/still-life" title="Glossary definition for 'Still life'"><span>still lifes</span></a> in which the painted marks are true both to observation and to his love of exploring <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/f/form" title="Glossary definition for 'Form'"><span>form</span></a> itself. This can be seen here in the treatment of the lamp, jug and book. Of the founders of the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/e/euston-road-school" title="Glossary definition for 'Euston Road School'"><span>Euston Road School</span></a>, Pasmore was the most strongly drawn to the sensuous qualities of paint and colour, not least those found in French art of the nineteenth century.</p>
Display caption
2004-08-18T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
<p><b>Victor Pasmore </b><span>1908-1998</span>
<br/>
<br/><b>Lamplight</b><span>
1941</span>
<br/>
<br/><span>N05253</span>
<br/>
<br/><span>Oil on canvas 635 x 765 (25 x 30 1/8)</span>
<br/>
<br/><span>Inscribed in red paint ‘VP.’ b.r.</span>
<br/>
<br/><span>Purchased from the artist (Knapping Fund) 1941</span>
<br/>
<br/><span>Exhibited:</span>
<br/><i>Paintings by Members of the Euston Road Group</i><span>, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, May-June 1941 (33, as </span><i>Interior with Lamplight</i><span>)</span>
<br/><i>Tate Gallery Wartime Acquisitions</i><span>, National Gallery, London, April-May 1942 (91)</span>
<br/><i>A Selection from the Tate Gallery’s Wartime Acquisitions</i><span>, CEMA tour, Royal Exchange, July-Aug. 1942, Cheltenham Art Gallery, Sept., Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Oct., Galleries of Birmingham Society of Arts, Nov.-Dec., Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, Jan.-Feb. 1943, Victoria Art Gallery, Bath, Feb-March, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, March-April, Manchester City Art Gallery, April-May, Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, May-June, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, June, Glasgow Museum and Art Gallery, Kelvingrove, July, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, Aug. 1943 (64)</span>
<br/><i>Modern British Pictures from the Tate Gallery</i><span>, British Council tour, 1946-7, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Jan.-Feb.  1946 (64), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, March (64), Raadhushallen, Copenhagen, April-May (64), Musée de Jeu de Paume, Paris, June-July (64), Musée des Beaux Arts, Berne, Aug.  (65), Akademie der Bildenden Kunste, Vienna, Sept.  (66), Narodni Galerie, Prague, Oct.-Nov.  (66), Muzeum Narodne, Warsaw, Nov.-Dec.  (66), Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Rome, Jan.-Feb. 1947 (66)</span>
<br/><i>Victor Pasmore: Retrospective Exhibition 1925-65</i><span>, Tate Gallery, London, May-June 1965 (22)</span>
<br/><i>One Man’s Choice: Selected by Dr Henry Roland from his own Collection and from Other Sources</i><span>, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, April-May 1985 (78)</span>
<br/><i>Victor Pasmore</i><span>, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Conn., Nov. 1988-Jan. 1989, The Phillips Collection, Washington DC, Feb.-April 1989 (5, repr. in col. p.28)</span>
<br/>
<br/><span>Literature:</span>
<br/><span>Alan Bowness, ‘The Paintings and Constructions of Victor Pasmore’, </span><i>Burlington Magazine</i><span>, vol.102, no.686, May 1960, p.201</span>
<br/><span>Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, </span><i>Tate Gallery: The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture</i><span>, II, London 1965, p.508</span>
<br/><span>Alan Bowness and Luigi Lambertini, </span><i>Victor Pasmore, with a Catalogue Raisonée of the Paintings, Constructions and Graphics 1926-1979</i><span>, London 1980, p. 290, no.48, repr. p.47 (col. )</span>
<br/><span>Bruce Laughton, </span><i>The Euston Road School: A Study in Objective Painting</i><span>, Aldershot 1986, p.218, repr. p.219</span>
<br/>
<br/><span>Also reproduced:</span>
<br/><span>Clive Bell, </span><i>Victor Pasmore</i><span>, Harmondsworth 1945, pl.1 (col.)</span>
<br/>
<br/><i>Lamplight</i><span>
shows the artist and his wife Wendy at their home at 117 Ebury Street</span><i>,</i><span>
near Victoria station in London. The Pasmores moved there on their marriage in June 1940. The artist recalled that the picture was painted around March 1941 when the explosion of a German landmine nearby destroyed the studio’s glass roof.</span><a href="#fn1" name="fnB1">[1]</a><span> He thought it possible that the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a> was not yet complete when the bomb struck and recalled that it had been damaged by the flying glass. That, prior to completion, the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/canvas" title="Glossary definition for 'Canvas'"><span>canvas</span></a> was patched at the edge of the book to the right of the jug confirms this. Pasmore related the eponymous oil lamp and sombre <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/t/tone" title="Glossary definition for 'Tone'"><span>tones</span></a> of the painting to the wartime blackout and the studio’s lack of electricity. When asked about the vibrant green colouring that suffuses the picture, however, he insisted: ‘I make up colours, I am not a photographer.’</span><a href="#fn2" name="fnB2">[2]</a><span>
The strong colouring is characteristic of his work of the late 1930s and early 1940s, seen most notably in </span><i>The Flower Barrow</i><span>, 1938-42 (National Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide),</span><a href="#fn3" name="fnB3">[3]</a><span>
which Clive Bell, writing in 1942, believed to be his masterpiece.</span><a href="#fn4" name="fnB4">[4]</a></p>
<p>
<br/><i>Lamplight</i><span>
was thinly executed in a number of layers of oil paint on a commercially prepared canvas. That the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/composition" title="Glossary definition for 'Composition'"><span>composition</span></a> was mapped out beforehand is apparent from underdrawing which remains visible in the vertical white flash beside the lamp’s chimney. Now thinly painted, this area was left bare when the green paint was applied. In addition there is a study for this work - a cursory sketch showing the lamp, part of the table and the figure of Wendy Pasmore.</span><a href="#fn5" name="fnB5">[5]</a><span>
In both the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/d/drawing" title="Glossary definition for 'Drawing'"><span>drawing</span></a> and the painting the figure has her left hand to her face as though in contemplation; however, the drawing shows her looking to her right rather than looking down as in the painting. In the sketch the table is partially obscured by an angled oblong, reminiscent of a drawing-board, which suggests that the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/s/still-life" title="Glossary definition for 'Still life'"><span>still-life</span></a> composition of books and jug seen in the painting were added to the composition later. The artist confirmed that the painting was partly done from life and partly invented.</span><a href="#fn6" name="fnB6">[6]</a><span>
That the self-<a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/portrait" title="Glossary definition for 'Portrait'"><span>portrait</span></a> on the left of the composition appears to hold out his left hand is consistent with a right-handed artist working with the aid of a mirror. The motif of the artist reflected in a mirror also appeared in Pasmore’s Titianesque </span><i>Reclining Nude</i><span>, 1939.</span><a href="#fn7" name="fnB7">[7]</a></p>
<p><span>  With the closure of the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/e/euston-road-school" title="Glossary definition for 'Euston Road School'"><span>Euston Road School</span></a> at the outbreak of war, Pasmore entered a more private, isolated period. Alan Bowness has associated the ‘thinly painted, emotionally detached figure studies’ like </span><i>Lamplight</i><span>
with a ‘national indulgence of understatement ... [and] reticence’.</span><a href="#fn8" name="fnB8">[8]</a><span>
The artist seems to confirm this sense of isolation in a letter to Euston Road colleague Graham Bell dated 25 March 1941. ‘I have been painting a great deal’, he wrote,</span></p>
<blockquote></blockquote>
<blockquote><span>Wendy sits for me and I have been doing flower studies and interior subjects. It is a new experience painting these days. One is no longer harassed by the conflicting ideas of fellow painters and friends and there are no tempting French pictures to imitate. One is thrown directly to nature, a good thing if you can rise to her.</span><a href="#fn9" name="fnB9">[9]</a><span>
</span></blockquote>
<p>
<br/><span>However, Bowness later described the work of the period as possessing ‘a quietness, an inner stillness that contrasts most strongly with the events of the outside world’.</span><a href="#fn10" name="fnB10">[10]</a><span>
Alastair Grieve has similarly written of its reflection of ‘the warmth of wartime family life’.</span><a href="#fn11" name="fnB11">[11]</a><span>
This concentration upon ‘</span><i>intimiste</i><span>’ subjects reflects Bonnard’s influence on Pasmore which Clive Bell identified.</span><a href="#fn12" name="fnB12">[12]</a><span>
It has also been suggested that it is equally indicative of Pasmore’s up-dating of Sickert’s <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/camden-town-group" title="Glossary definition for 'Camden Town Group'"><span>Camden Town</span></a> paintings.</span><a href="#fn13" name="fnB13">[13]</a></p>
<p>
<br/><i>Lamplight</i><span>
was purchased by the Tate Gallery from the artist shortly before its inclusion in the </span><i>Euston Road</i><span> exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford in 1941 which was largely organised by Pasmore with some assistance from Kenneth Clark.</span>
<br/>
<br/><span>Chris Stephens</span>
<br/><span>Feb. 1998</span></p>
<hr/><div class="footnote_text"><span class="footnote_reference"><a href="#fnB1" name="fn1">[1]</a></span>
Interview with the author, 27 Feb. 1996
<br/><span class="footnote_reference"><a href="#fnB2" name="fn2">[2]</a></span>
Ibid.
<br/><span class="footnote_reference"><a href="#fnB3" name="fn3">[3]</a></span>
Repr. Clive Bell, <i>Victor Pasmore</i>, 1945, pl.7 ( col.)
<br/><span class="footnote_reference"><a href="#fnB4" name="fn4">[4]</a></span>
Ibid., p.16</div>
<div class="footnote_text"><span class="footnote_reference"><a href="#fnB5" name="fn5">[5]</a></span>
Sold Sotheby’s, London,  4 Dec. 1963, lot 126
<br/><span class="footnote_reference"><a href="#fnB6" name="fn6">[6]</a></span>
Interview with the author, 27 Feb. 1996
<br/><span class="footnote_reference"><a href="#fnB7" name="fn7">[7]</a></span>
Repr. Bell 1945, pl.32</div>
<div class="footnote_text"><span class="footnote_reference"><a href="#fnB8" name="fn8">[8]</a></span>
Alan Bowness, ‘The Paintings and Constructions of Victor Pasmore’, <i>Burlington Magazine</i>, vol.102, no.686, May 1960, p.201</div>
<div class="footnote_text"><span class="footnote_reference"><a href="#fnB9" name="fn9">[9]</a></span>
Bruce Laughton, <i>The Euston Road School: A Study in Objective Painting</i>, Aldershot 1986, pp.218-19</div>
<div class="footnote_text"><span class="footnote_reference"><a href="#fnB10" name="fn10">[10]</a></span>
Alan Bowness and Luigi Lambertini, <i>Victor Pasmore, with a Catalogue Raisonée of the Paintings, Constructions and Graphics 1926-1979</i>, 1980, p.10
<br/><span class="footnote_reference"><a href="#fnB11" name="fn11">[11]</a></span>
Alastair Grieve<span>, </span><i>Victor Pasmore</i>, exh. cat., Arts Council tour, 1980, p.6
<br/><span class="footnote_reference"><a href="#fnB12" name="fn12">[12]</a></span>
Bell 1945, p.15
<br/><span class="footnote_reference"><a href="#fnB13" name="fn13">[13]</a></span>
Laughton 1986, p.218</div>

Catalogue entry
2004-09-21T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
actions: postures and motions adults artist, painter arts and entertainment Blood, Wendy book - non-specific domestic family flower furnishings heating and lighting husband individuals: female interior - non-specific interiors jug leisure and pastimes light / lamp man named individuals objects Pasmore, Victor Pasmore, Wendy people plants and flowers portraits reading reading, writing, printed matter recreational activities self-portraits sitting society table vessels and containers wife woman work and occupations