Wyndham Lewis - luminary novelist and influential modernist painter, or antisemetic Hitler-supporting blackshirt? We're just being facetious, of course. Despite once referring to Adolf as a "man of peace", he rescinded all that naughty anti-jew jive talk in his satirical The Jews, Are They Human?, and definitely did not continue to be known for his elitist and misanthropic views. It's not like he was involved in nazi-roleplaying sextapes or anything. So there'll be none of that sensationalist character defamation here.

The National Portrait Gallery are currently running an exhibit displaying the portraits of the artist once described by Walter Sickert as "the greatest portraitist of this or any other time". See if you agree.

Wyndham was interested in the idea of multiple self-identities. In this painting, he constructs himself as a 'Tyro' - a character he created to mock the desperately decadent interwar archetype. The wildly grinning Tyros (among which he counted himself) were brought to life in a magazine bearing the same name, and perhaps provided some of the inspiration behind Evelyn Waugh's later novel, Bright Young Things.

The similar pose, angle and clothing in another self-portrait created the same year highlights the difference in style and expression, showing a far more subdued and sombre side to the artist.

Though his portraiture took a back seat to his writing in the 20s and 30s, his return to the pictoral form after this drew much influence from his new circle of literary associates. Among these were T S Eliot, Edith Sitwell, James Joyce and Ezra Pound, all of whom he had sit for him. He allegedly first met Ezra Pound at the writer's studio in Paris where he was receiving boxing lessons from Ernest Hemingway, and was struck by his physique. Their collaboration as part of the Camden Town Group led to the coinage of the term 'Vorticism' by Pound, to describe the geometric abstraction prominent in Lewis' paintings.

The painting of T S Eliot was famously omitted from an annual exhibition at the Royal Academy, apparently due to a 'phallic reference' in the background. Can you see where it is yet?

It was this kind of confrontationalism that divided Lewis from the affluent and influential audience he might have otherwise courted. It was not until 1928 that he began to receive acclaim from the establishment with a commission from the BBC to complete his novel The Childermass for radio broadcast. Consequently, prior to this he was somewhat lacking in funds, and in 1923 a monthly payment was set up by a group of well-wishers to allow him to continue his artistic pursuits. Of course, Wyndham took this with characteristic grace, and reputedly responded to a late cheque with the message: "WHERE'S THE FUCKING STIPEND? LEWIS."