Anthony Powell

Anthony Powell

"Travels with my aunt"

490 x 380 mm (framed 710 x 585 mm), ink and blackwash, titled to upper left, signed in pencil with dedication to lower right ("For Stanley [Seeger] with | much love. Anthony | 1980."), mounted, framed and glazed

The original costume design by Anthony Powell for the 1972 American comedy film Travels with My Aunt, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design. Based on Graham Greene's 1969 novel of the same name, and starring Maggie Smith as Augusta Bertram, Travels with My Aunt follows Augusta's attempt to smuggle money across Europe in order to pay the $100,000 ransom of her true love. She invites her "nephew", Henry Pulling, to accompany her on her travels, starting in Paris. Before departing from the Gare de Lyon on the Orient Express, Augusta dines with Henry at the Train Bleu, dressed in one of Powell's designs featured here: an over-the-top black fur-lined cloak, and a wide-brimmed black hat.

PROVENANCE:

Gifted by the artist to Stanley Seeger in 1980: inscription to lower right; additionally inscribed on back of frame ("This was for the sequence | in the "Train Bleu" restaurant | at the Gare de Lyon, so | I thought it might be kind of | appropriate! | Much love | A.")