signed (lower right), titled and dated (to label to reverse), oil on canvas (Dimensions: 75cm x 62.5cm (29.5in x 24.6in))

(75cm x 62.5cm (29.5in x 24.6in))

Footnote: Provenance: Archer Gallery, London; Private Collection, UK. Having studied at the Slade in London in 1919, Leon Underwood went on to embark on a prolific career as a sculptor and painter, producing an important and an eclectic body of work. His travels through Mexico and West Africa had an important influence on his work, particularly in the representation of the human figure. Marina (1930) can be considered as one of Underwood’s major Mexican paintings, and is closely related to Mestiza (1929) and Marina’s Remorse (1930). In 1928 Underwood travelled through Mexico, down the shore of the Gulf of Mexico, over the Sierra Madre to the Pacific coast with the author and travel writer Phillip Russell, studying Aztec and Mayan art, whilst at the very height of the anti-Catholic persecutions. The resulting book Red Tiger Adventures in Yucatan and Mexico with coloured linocut illustrations by Underwood was an idyllic and romantic representation of modern Mexico, but the trip provided him with significant material for his imagination for the following decade. On his return from Mexico in December 1928 he steadily produced engravings and paintings on Mexican themes, the most significant being as series of oil paintings depicting the heroes and villains of the conquest that were dramatized in an important series of oil paintings from 1929-30 including Marina. Her pose and general appearance derive from the Tehuana women of his illustrations, which would become an influential source for his work of the later 1930s and is known not to have gone unnoticed by Henry Moore and Frank Dobson who he associated with in the following years. Literature: Neve, Christopher, Leon Underwood, Thames and Hudson, 1974, p.78, no.73 (illustrated).