Portrait of Claud Lovat Fraser

In this drawing, Gaudier-Brzeska portrays his friend, the illustrator and theater designer Lovat Fraser, leaning casually against a sofa as if caught in a moment of relaxed conversation. Works like this reveal the artist’s absorption of the European modernist styles he had seen before immigrating to London from France. Rendered in bold lines and flat strokes of garish color, it echoes the saturated hues of Fauvist paintings by artists like Henri Matisse. The pastel is applied in blocks that appear as softer versions of the facets found in Cubist works (2022).