The Post-Break-Up Glow: Leonora Carrington’s Freedom

By Claire Ferguson

Leonora Carrington’s artistic career spanned many decades. However, long considered to be one of Max Ernst’s many female ‘muses’, Carrington struggled to receive equal recognition for her work. The two artists encountered each other in London in 1936, during the first Surrealist movement exhibition. By the time the pair met, Ernst was in his second marriage and was already a well-established figure in the Dada and Surrealist scenes. He was forty-six, and Carrington had only just turned twenty. Having experienced turbulence with her family in Lancashire, she soon moved to Paris with her new lover. For Ernst, Carrington embodied the Surrealist ideal of the femme-enfant, popularized by the writings of Sigmund Freud. His exploitation of her as muse, along with the twenty-six-year age gap, are unquestionable indications of their uneven power dynamic.

Lee Miller, Leonora Carrington and Max Ernst, Lambe Creek, Cornwall, England, 1937, photograph

Their relationship finally came to a boil at the turn of the decade with the outbreak of the Second World War. Ernst, of German heritage, became a prisoner in France. Carrington, distraught by the separation from her lover and the anxieties surrounding the war, fled to Spain. She became institutionalized in a psychiatric institution in Santander by her family and underwent electric shock treatment. Eventually, she was able to escape to the Mexican Embassy where she encountered diplomat Renato Leduc. They married only a few days later, and she was able to flee Europe. Ernst, on the other hand, manages to escape internment with the help of art collector Peggy Guggenheim, with whom he would also become romantically involved. The former couple would later meet in New York, and exchange portraits of each other. This is where Carrington is said to have revealed her 1939 Portrait of Max Ernst.

Leonora Carrington, Portrait of Max Ernst, 1939, oil on canvas, 50.30 x 26.80 cm, National Galleries Scotland

Like most of Carrington’s work, little detail is provided for her Portrait of Max Ernst. In 1991 Carrington granted a rare interview opportunity to Peter Conrad for The Observer. In it, she explains: ‘At that time, I still accepted a lot of shit. Being a muse! All it means is that you’re someone’s object. I was totally in love with him, fascinated by him, but I was so young.’ Carrington’s resistance to being demarcated as a ‘muse’ illustrates her metamorphosis, both as a woman and as an artist. In all its ambiguity, The Portrait of Max Ernst manages to convey a bold sense of rebellion against the artist’s restrictive male partner. The composition is riddled with a frozen landscape, with Ernst taking centre stage. He is dressed in a lavish red robe, covered in bird feathers. His costume suggests otherness, monstrosity. His robe tapers at its end to encompass a fishtail. Although famously elusive about her paintings, in her interview with Peter Cohen she simply stated ‘Maybe, there was something fishy about him.’ To the left of his person, Carrington paints a horse emerging from the ground, frozen solid. Icicles drip down the animal’s face and body, and it leans back, stunned. Horses were a constantly repeated trope in Carrington’s work. Having experienced an affinity for horseback riding during childhood, the animal brought nostalgic and joyous memories for the artist. They are also depicted in many of her written works. As such, horses are considered for Carrington to be utilized as a kind of self-anthropomorphisation. Another horse is depicted in a green lantern that Ernst carries. The animal is trapped, unable to move without the help of Ernst, who propels it forward. The horse is a surrogate symbol of the artist herself. Carrington presents a paradox, reflecting her feelings for her lover. While she was indebted to him as her connection to the Surrealist art scene, he also restricted her. The white horse portrays her alter-ego - allowing her to reflect both her beauty which was exploited by her partner and her feelings of limitation.

Leonora Carrington Self-Portrait (Inn of the Dawn Horse), 1937-38, oil on canvas, 65 x 81.3 cm, The Metropolitan Museum

The Portrait of Max Ernst exists alongside Carrington’s self-portrait, which explores similar themes. Self-Portrait (Inn of the Dark Horse), 1937-38, presents an antithesis to the previously discussed work. Instead of her lover, Carrington depicts herself in the centre of this composition. She again uses horses as a prominent theme, but with a more hopeful message, of the prospect of breaking free from her partner. The painting sees a white rocking horse positioned above the artist, stagnant. The toy represents an object that the couple actually owned, which Carrington stumbled upon at a flea market. It likely proves an overt representation of the dynamic between herself and Ernst. Through a single window in the scene, another horse can be seen, galloping through a forest. The juxtaposition of its freedom against the stagnancy of the rocking horse communicates the constraint the artist feels in her relationship. Like the frozen figure in Ernst’s portrait, the rocking horse is motionless, constrained. She no longer wishes to be eclipsed by the reputation of her partner. Like the horse in the window, Carrington hopes to be freed from his grasp.

Max Ernst with Rocking Horse, Paris, 1938, photograph, Max Ernst Museum Brühl des LVR, Stiftung Max Ernst

Eventually, Carrington did exactly that. Upon her reveal of the Portrait of Max Ernst, she would never see her former lover again. She moved to Mexico, where she worked as an artist until the age of ninety-four. She also became a co-founder of the Women’s Liberation Movement in Mexico, continuing to serve as a champion for gender equality. She would go on to achieve great success without the presence of Max Ernst. Although Carrington once doubted this prospect, having stated: ‘I painted for myself… I never believed anyone would exhibit or buy my work.’ In a Sotheby’s auction last year, the artist’s Hieronymus Bosch-coded The Garden of Paracelsus, (1957), sold for $3.26 million - a record price for one of her works. It nearly doubled the auction house’s estimate, far surpassing industry expectations.

Notes:

Chadwick, Whitney. ‘Leonora Carrington: Evolution of a Feminist Consciousness’, Woman's Art Journal, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1986): pp.37–42.

Conrad, Peter. ‘Leonora: The Last of the Surrealists’, The Observer Magazine (8 Dec 1991): pp. 24–28

Hubert, Renée Riese. ‘Leonora Carrington and Max Ernst: Artistic Partnership and Feminist Liberation’, New Literary History, Vol. 22, No. 3 (1991): 715–45.

‘Leonora Carrington: The Garden of Paracelsus’, Sotheby’s, https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2022/modern-evening-auction/the-garden-of-paracelsus

National Galleries. ‘Leonora Carrington’s Portrait of Max Ernst’, Talk’s & Lectures, YouTube, 11 September 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIm2KaKEJmc