Ce catalogue a été édité à l'occasion de l'exposition Wyndham Lewis - Portraits présentée à la National Portrait Gallery, à Londres, du 3 juillet au 19 octobre 2008.

Wyndham Lewis was the most important British modernist artist and writer of the first half of the 20th Century. As the leader of the Vorticists and one of the four "Men of 1914" -a group which also included Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and James Joyce- he is credited with revolutionizing 20th-Century art and literature.

With over fifty full-colour illustrations, Wyndham Lewis is the first book to focus exclusively on Lewis's unique achievements as a portraitist. Self-representation was always the performance of a public role for Lewis, and the book begins by examining the multiple identities he presented in his self-portraits.

He found a similar multiplicity in the sitters who are the subjects of some of the greatest portraits in 20th-century British art : his fellow "Men of 1914", Edith Sitwell, Naomi Mitchison and his wife Froanna.

Paul Edwards is professor of English and History of Art at Bath Spa University and Richard Humphreys, Tate Curator and Lewis specialist.