IotD: The Many Faces of Charles Henri Ford

I’ve gushed about Deviates, Inc. before, and I can’t help but repost a mini-collection that was posted there yesterday, which contains multiple sketches of young Charles Henri Ford drawn by Pavel Tchelitchew. My guess is that all date from the 1930’s, in the period just after Ford and Tchelitchew met in Paris and embarked on their decades-spanning romantic relationship.

From Ford’s diary, July 1953:

“Twenty years ago tomorrow was the beginning of what has resulted in a twenty-year relationship, constant association, with Pavlik. I wrote Parker [Tyler] then: ‘I’ve found a genius.'”

See the original post at Deviates, Inc here.

WORK CITED

Ford, Charles Henri. Water from a Bucket: A Diary, 1948-1957. New York City: Turtlepoint, 2001.

 

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IotD: Pavel Tchelitchew by Cecil Beaton

Russian neo-romantic painter Pavel Tchelitchew photographed with characteristic elegance by Cecil Beaton. The superimposed elements over the portrait not only makes for a lovely visual effect, but also cleverly evokes the neo-romantic impulse to synthesize realist and surrealist modes of artistic representation.

Tchelitchew was the partner of Charles Henri Ford, and as such I have inevitably been learning quite a bit about him through my thesis research process. Their partnership spanned from the early 1930’s until the Russian painter’s death in 1957.

I have been unable to get a pinpoint an exact date or provenance of this portrait, but judging from other photographs I have seen of Tchelitchew, I’d guess this was taken sometime during the 1930’s. If I find more information I will update this post.