Design for 'The Wine Press' tapestry, by 1947

Sir Frank Brangwyn RA (1867 - 1956)

RA Collection: Art

A squared up study for The Wine Press (also known as The Vinery; private collection, Santa Monica, California, USA), which was woven as a tapestry by the Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh, in 1947. Brangwyn based the composition on an earlier oil painting which is now in Dudley Art Gallery. The drawing is squared up in pencil with the figures outlined in charcoal and coloured with pastels. The central section is particularly vivid with a deep blue shade contrasting with the areas of warm orange, yellow and brown.

In May 1948, Brangwyn wrote to Elinor Pugh that 'a noble lord came to me and asked me to design some tapestries, a thing I have always wanted to do. A large Last Supper and a subject full of colour of a wine pressing which I fear is rather like the Benozzo Gozzoli of Noah's wine pressing'.

This drawing was identified as a study for The Wine Press by Brangwyn expert Libby Horner in 1999. As noted in correspondence from Horner and Nick Savage (see Royal Academy object files), there are substantial differences between the cartoon and the final composition. Firstly, the image is reversed and the third of the drawing on the right-hand-side differs entirely from the corresponding left section of the tapestry and oil painting. The latter feature a woman and child standing in front of a white pillar with a seated man at their feet but this group is omitted from the drawing and in its place Brangwyn has simply allowed more space for the limbs of the existing figures. In the background, he included four wine pressers rather than the three shown in the final composition. Significantly, most of the right hand section of this drawing is on a separate sheet of paper appended to the original, suggesting that this was drawn at a time when Brangwyn was experimenting with the composition.

There is a gouache study which may also relate to the tapestry entitled Pressing the Wine in the Brangwyn collection at the Musée Municipal at Orange, France and Horner has identified further works by Brangwyn, in private collections, depicting the same subject or some of the same figures.