Untitled ('The Rock Driller')

Copyright

Maker

(artist)
1885-1963

Title

Untitled ('The Rock Driller')

Date of Production

(circa) 1913

Medium

traces of graphite, black ink (with added oil?) and bodycolour on wove paper

Dimensions

Height: 9.9 cm
Width: 13.2 cm

Object Number

D.2016.XX.10

Mode of Acquisition

Brigid Peppin, gift, 2016

Credit

Courtauld Gallery, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust)

Location

Not currently on display

Keywords

Label Text

The right-hand figure in this small but powerful drawing resembles a sculpture by Jacob Epstein called 'The Rock Drill' (1913), of which Saunders was surely aware. Although the brutish male figure in Saunders’s drawing seems to echo Epstein’s, the dancing female figure acts as a joyful counterbalance to the grimly mechanistic driller. She may be a sly feminist riposte to the machine-worship of many of the male artists who gathered under the banner of Vorticism.

Inscriptions

Watermark: Watermark: none.

Inscription: none.

Collector's mark: none.

Provenance

with the artist until her death in 1963; bequeathed to her sister, Ethel Saunders; bequeathed to her first cousin once removed, Helen Peppin, 1971; given to her daughter, Brigid Peppin, 1989; offered by her as a gift and part-purchase to the Samuel Courtauld Trust, 2016

Exhibition History

Praxitella: Wyndham Lewis, Helen Saunders and Iris Barry, Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds, 22/06/2023-05/11/2023

Drawings Gallery Display - Helen Saunders, Courtauld Gallery, London, 14/10/2022-29/01/2023

Helen Saunders (1885-1963), Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 09/01/1996-03/03/1996; Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, 16/03/1996-20/04/1996

Literature

James King, 'Our Little Gang': The Lives of the Vorticists (London: Reaktion Books, 2025)
pp. 96-97

Peppin, Brigid, and Cork, Richard, Helen Saunders (1885-1963), exh. cat., Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and Graves Art Gallery ,Sheffield, 1996
pp. 11-12, 44
ill. on p. 35

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