Ascending Angel, 1929

with the artist’s family;
Private Collection

London, Royal Academy, Summer Exhibition, 1932, no.620;
Cologne, International Festival of Religious Art, 1948 (unnumbered);
Brighton Art Gallery, Glyn Philpot R.A., 1884-1937, April – May 1953, no.55;
London, National Portrait Gallery, Glyn Philpot 1884-1937: Edwardian Aesthete to Thirties Modernist, November 1984 – February 1985, no.44, illustrated in the exhibition catalogue;
Woking, The Lightbox, The Ingram Collection: Dreams and Nightmares, 22 May – 15 July 2012;
Woking, The Lightbox, The Ingram Collection: Where’s God Now? 18 July – 27 September 2015;
Hastings, Jerwood Gallery, Century: 100 Modern British Artists, 23 October 2016 – 8 January 2017;
Cookham, The Stanley Spencer Gallery, Counterpoint: Stanley Spencer and his contemporaries, 28 March – 3 November 2019;
Norwich, Sainsbury Centre, Art Deco by the Sea, 9 February – 20 September 2020 and touring to Newcastle, Laing Art Gallery, 17 October 2020 – 27 February 2021

Daisy Philpot, Manuscript Catalogue of Paintings by Glyn Philpot, c. 1938-1957 (p. 21);
A.C. Sewter, Glyn Philpot: 1884-1937, Batsford, London, 1951 (illustrated, pl. 68);
Robin Gibson, Glyn Philpot 1884-1937: Edwardian Aesthete to Thirties Modernist, London, 1984 (illustrated, p. 29, 73);
J.G.P. Delaney, Glyn Philpot: His Life & Art, Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot, 1999 (illustrated, p. 113, 116-117, 122, fig. 23)

When exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1932 Ascending Angel was singled out by critics for outraged attack, the Connoisseur calling it ‘unwisely bizarre’. Glyn Philpot himself thought the painting very strange, an expression of a deeply felt emotion, but it liberated him for future work. The use of colour is a key element, the vivid red flashes from the figure creating a vortex-like diagonal compositional structure which heightens the sense of imbalance and unreality. The figure has a distinctly threatening air, making the title somewhat ironic.