Autograph letter signed ("Evelyn").
4to. 4 pages on bifolium. With autograph envelope.
€ 4.500,00
To Robin Campbell, the future Director of Art of the Arts Council, who believed that a letter Waugh had written for The Times was a hoax and had therefore written to his friend to confirm. The present letter is Waugh’s response in which he offers his views on aesthetics. Waugh defends his letter to The Times with a fierce attack on Picasso who, he claims, fails as an artist and is a symbol of decadence and the decline of Western civilisation: "The only criticisms valid for him are: 'Ooh doesn’t it make you feel funny inside' or 'the fellow’s a charlatan"'. He includes Gertrude Stein in his criticism ("aesthetically in the same position as, theologically, a mortal-sinner who has put himself outside the world order of God’s mercy").
With embossed letterhead of Piers Court, where Waugh lived from 1937 to 1956 and wrote many of his best known works there, including Scoop, Brideshead Revisited, Men at Arms and Officers and Gentlemen.
