Cotton lavender and quinces

Details

Vanessa Bell (1879-1961)
Cotton lavender and quinces
signed and dated 'V Bell 1934' (lower right)
oil on canvas
25¾ x 19¾ in (65.1 x 49.7 cm.)

Provenance

with Alex Reid & Lefevre, London, where purchased by Prof. H. Wilson, his sale; Christie's, London, 12 July 1974, lot 329, where purchased by the present owner.

Literature

The Studio, 504, March 1935 (reproduced as colour frontispiece).

Exhibited

London, Tate Gallery, The Art of Bloomsbury, November 1999-January 2000, no. 135 (illustrated): this exhibition travelled to San Marino, Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, March-April 2000; and New Haven, Yale Center for British Art, May-September 2000.

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium.

Lot Essay

Richard Shone (see R. Shone, The Art of Bloomsbury, catalogue for the exhibition at the Tate Gallery, London, 1999, p. 223) writes: 'Cotton lavender and quinces was painted in Bell's studio at 8 Fitzroy Street. The urn, made by the potter Phyllis Keyes and was painted by Bell herself, holds cotton lavender (santolina), a border of which edges the lawn at Charleston; it is joined by a few everlasting flowers and quinces. The emphatic pattern of the cloth with its frontal drop across the width of the painting (a favourite device of Bell and Grant) increases the sense of recession beyond the beautifully judged reflection in the mirror. A portrait of Dora Morris (circa 1936, Leeds City Art Gallery) shows the sitter reflected in the same mirror with the same cloth in front of it'.

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