Red cloth, gilt title on spine; dustwrapper has some edgewear & rubbing & a couple of small closed tears. 167pp, colour illustrations; 2 colour pictures glued onto preliminary pages. 245x170mm. 087982039X. 535g. 'On June 14, 1929, a one-man show of the paintings of D. H. Lawrence opened for public viewing at the Dorothy Warren Gallery in London. Reactions by the public & art critics were mixed, & after three weeks, the Home Secretary, responding to complaints about the subject matter of the works, "raided" the gallery & removed thirteen of the paintings. In the furor that followed, many questions about artistic freedom were raised, & eventually the paintings were returned with the stipulation that they would remain unexhibited in England. Published in conjunction with the opening of the exhibition was an impressive volume of colored reproductions of the paintings by the Mandrake Press under the aegis of P. R. Stephenson to be sold by private subscription. The Mandrake Press edition of The Paintings of D. H. Lawrence - now a collector's item - is the only complete gathering of the exhibited paintings still in existence, since some of the original works have been lost, some have been destroyed, & the surviving paintings have been widely dispersed. This work is the first full-length study of the paintings of Lawrence. Although many articles have been written that have emphasized the literature of Lawrence & made passing references to the paintings in order to make a point about the writings, this is the first work to treat the paintings of the Mandrake Press edition in depth as legitimate vehicles of creative expression & discuss them in terms of the artist's inspiration. Curiously enough, even though Lawrence is considered a major writer of novels, short stories, & poetry, many people are unaware of the fact that he was also a painter. Even those who are aware of his forays into the medium draw much of their conclusions about the paintings through reading about them rather than viewing them. Although Lawrence was not a particularly skilled painter in terms of technique, that was not his purpose in painting. His attitude toward art was one quite separate from mere technical concerns, & his paintings are quite intriguing representations of his philosophy. There is no doubt that Lawrence was one of the most literary minded of painters; that is, he would not have painted the way he did if he had not written or thought the way he did. This critical study demonstrates Lawrence's approach to painting by placing the paintings of the Mandrake Press edition in relationship to their literary (& other) origins. Thus an aspect of Lawrence's artistic expression that has been generally ignored is dealt with in fascinating detail. Overshadowed by the many critical treatments of his prodigious literary productions, Lawrence's paintings - those products of the last years of his life - have never before received a thorough examination in the artistic or literary sense. The Vultures & The Phoenix: A Study of the Mandrake Press Edition of the Paintings of D. H. Lawrence rectifies this oversight.'

d h Lawrence Paintings