The Duc de Joyeux

joyce.jpg

I was writing about the Vorticists last week so for the traditional Bloomsday post here’s a portrait of Joyce by Wyndham Lewis. The Vorticists were supporters of Joyce (he’s praised in the first issue of Blast), and Lewis produced several portrait sketches. This one—The Duc de Joyeux Sings—is the only example I’ve seen in something approaching the Vorticist style. It’s also a little cartoony but then there’s something of the caricature in many of Lewis’s more serious portraits. As usual, the month of June brings the Joyce-related news stories:

Signed first edition of Ulysses set to make over €100,000

How Would Ulysses Be Received Today?

Finnegans Wake is a bestseller in China

Ulysses and Us by Declan Kiberd

Previously on { feuilleton }
Dubliners
Covering Joyce
James Joyce in Reverbstorm
Joyce in Time
Happy Bloomsday
Passages from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake
Books for Bloomsday

2 thoughts on “The Duc de Joyeux”

  1. there’s something of the caricature in many of Lewis’s more serious portraits
    Did Lewis make much of a distinction between his commissioned portraits and, I dunno, his Tyros?

    Last time I tried to struggle through ‘Childermass’, large parts of it read like outtakes from ‘Ulysses’.

  2. I don’t know much about Lewis’s attitudes towards his art but I keep thinking I ought to give The Human Age a go. JG Ballard wrote an equivocal but intriguing review of the books for New Worlds magazine.

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