John Banting (1902-1971)
John Banting (1902-1972) was a Surrealist painter with an idiosyncratic style and a subversive sense of humour. He originally trained as a bank clerk while attending Bernard Meninsky's evening classes at Westminster School of Art. Banting then moved to Paris to study in 1922, where he exhibited with the Surindépendants, and met some important members of the avant-garde during this time, including Man Ray, Constantin Brancusi, and Peggy Guggenheim. He joined the London Group in 1927 and was invited to exhibit with the 7 & 5 Society in 1929.
The Hat of Leaves dates from this period, and was exhibited in Banting's first solo exhibition at the Wertheim Gallery in 1931. The painting shows the head of a woman enshrouded by a number of large and heavily-veined leaves; something that would become a recurring motif of the artist's early Surrealist period. It bears comparison to The Begonia Woman, a nude portrait by Banting of Nina Hamnett, with three enormous begonia leaves growing out of her body in place of her head and arms, or Daybreak, also on display, where the feet of a nude man sprout and pattern the sky with arabesques. The Critic for the Observer (April 19, 1931) commented that 'Mr Banting has evidently seen Dr Blosfeldt's photographs of a young aconite shoot which looks like a human figure, with leaves for hands, and he has ingeniously toyed with this idea'.
This was one of two paintings that was purchased from the Wertheim show by Banting's friend, the novelist Rosamond Lehmann. Lehmann subsequently commissioned the artist to paint a mural at her Oxfordshire home, Ipsden House which included six panels for the entrance hall, depicting human-like silhouettes, as well as a ceiling decoration. Banting also designed a curtain in a Surrealist style made in honey-coloured hessian with an enormous appliquéd male figure outlined with giant fabric tape-measures. Lehmann and her brother, John (who joined Leonard and Virginia Woolf as managing director of the Hogarth Press) were important patrons to Banting during these early years, and he was, in Rosamond's words 'a true bohemian lovable eccentric'.
Provenance
Collection of Rosamond Lehmann, thence by descent
Exhibitions
Paintings by John Banting, Wertheim Gallery, London, April 10 - 29, 1931