EDMOND XAVIER KAPP B.A.
(born 1890)
"Mother and Child"
Pencil Drawing. Signed. 10
¼" x 8"
IMAGE
Edmond Xavier Kapp was a painter, draughtsman, caricaturist and
lithographer. He was born on 5th November 1890 in London and was educated at Owen's
School; Christ's College, Cambridge; Berlin University and also in London, Paris and Rome. He read for Medieval and Modern Language
Tripos, but spent more time writing and drawing. He began publishing caricatures in Granta and Cambridge Magazine and was given his first one-artist show at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. He later took a studio and earned his living
by selling caricatures to periodicals.
He served with the British Expeditionary Force from 1914 to 1919 and
also in the Intelligence, GHQ From 1940
to 1941 he worked as an official war artist on drawings of "Life under London" and from 1946 to 1947
was invited by Unesco to go to Paris and make twenty portrait
drawings of leading delegates to its first International Congress. He studied for short periods at home and
abroad and had a solo exhibition at the Leicester Galleries, London in 1922. This, like all his
first ten solo exhibitions, consisted entirely of drawings. All together he held 35 one-man shows in
London., Paris, Milan, Geneva, Buffalo and Toronto and also provincial art
galleries. He was also represented in
"British Art Since Whistler" at the National Gallery in 1945 as well
as exhibiting at Chenil and New Chenil Galleries, Cooling and Sons Gallery and
Goupil Gallery.A 50 years retrospective exhibition was held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1961. Official purchases
of work by Kapp have been made by the National, Portrait Gallery, the Victoria
and Albert Museum, the British Museum, the Imperial War Museum, the London
Museum, Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, the Ashmolean Museum Oxford, the
Municipal Galleries at Manchester, Birmingham, Bradford, Leeds, Wakefield and
Kendall, the Contemporary Art Society, Caius and Christ's Colleges Cambridge,
Merton and Barber Institute of Fine Arts Birmingham (acquired 240 drawings in
1969) and the private collections of H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh, Samuel
Courtauld, Sir Kenneth Clark, Sir Hugh Walpole, Edward le Bas, Sacha Guitry and
Daniel de Pass. Publications include Personalities
(Secker), Reflections (Cape), Pastiche, Minims (Faber), and Ten
Great Lawyers (Butterworth) He lived in London at 2 Steeles Studios,
Haverstock Hill and also in Paris.
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