Woodland

Details

Duncan Grant (1885-1978)
Woodland
oil on board
25 x 17½ in. (63.5 x 44.5 cm.)
Painted circa 1912

Provenance

Sir Michael Sadler, Oxford, by whom purchased at the 1930 exhibition.

Exhibited

London, Leicester Galleries, The Camden Town Group, January-February 1930, no. 30.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis

Lot Essay

The present work was probably painted in September 1912 when Grant was staying with Clive and Vanessa Bell at Virginia Woolf's rented property, Asheham House, in the Sussex Downs. If 1912 is the correct date, then the picture was painted in the year Grant was still a member of the Camden Town Group (he showed one painting in the 2nd of the Group's exhibitions, December 1911). Woodland was the only work by Grant selected for the retrospective of the Group in 1930 at the Leicester Galleries and presumably came from the artist. It certainly has affinities with landscapes of 1912 by Spencer Gore and also by Harold Gilman. The geometrising of the foliage and ovoid forms are characteristic of Grant's painting at this period and were to become a hallmark of his cubist-influenced works of 1913.

We are very grateful to Richard Shone for providing the catalogue entry for lots 20 and 24.

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