Illustration (Typhoon) (1914–1915): Art, History and Details

Illustration (Typhoon) (1914–1915) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Edward Alexander Wadsworth (British, 1889–1949).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

From 1913 to 1919, Wadsworth was an exponent of Vorticism, an avant-garde movement in England that, like a vortex or whirling force, drew all the most positive innovative elements of the time into an energetic synthesis. This group of artists, which also included Windham Lewis, David Bomberg, and Christopher Nevinson, developed geometric styles that merged the spatial analysis of Cubism with the preoccupation with dynamic urban motifs and industrial landscapes celebrated by the Italian Futurists. The description of a ship's engine room in Joseph Conrad's novel Typhoon was the motivation for Illustration. The topic was a natural choice for Wadsworth, who was interested in both machinery and the sea.

Object facts

• Title: Illustration (Typhoon)
• Date: 1914–1915
• Creator attribution: Edward Alexander Wadsworth (British, 1889–1949)
• Culture: England, 20th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: woodcut
• Dimensions: Sheet: 31.3 x 27.7 cm (12 5/16 x 10 7/8 in.); Image: 29 x 25.4 cm (11 7/16 x 10 in.)
• Collection: PR - Woodcut
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1987.50

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Sims, Lowery Stokes. The persistence of geometry: form, content, and culture in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2006.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.