John Littlewood (chess player) John Littlewood (chess player) John Eric Littlewood (25 May 1931 – 16 September 2009) was for many years a leading British chess player and took the title of national senior champion in 2006. Perhaps his most famous game was the one he lost against the world champion Mikhail Botvinnik at the Hastings International Chess Congress 1961/2. Littlewood launched a fearsome attack which Botvinnik was able to defend only by means of a tactical finesse. Botvinnik chose to include the game in his autobiographical "Best Games 1947–1970". John Littlewood was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire in 1931, the fourth of his eleven
Soldier at a Game of Chess echo-like profile of the face and cap in the background plane directed downward toward the game, for it becomes almost inevitable to see the soldier's alter ego; an effect that both pulls the man into the background of the composition and pushes him forward towards the viewer, again, canceling out indications of depth. Here, Metzinger uses a checkerboard and wooden table to establish a clearly demarcated fore-plane that is non-fixed in relation to which its 'hovering' chess pieces are situated. This profound battle between planimetric and perspectival dimensions as here in "Soldier at a Game of Chess" has precedence in