Vase of Flowers: Design for the Omega Workshops

Details

Vanessa Bell (1879-1961)
Vase of Flowers: Design for the Omega Workshops
oil on paper laid on board
14½ x 36 in. (36.8 x 91.4 cm.)
Painted in 1917.

Provenance

The artist's estate until 1987.

Literature

New York, Davis and Long, Vanessa Bell: A Retrospective Exhibition, 1980, no. 33.
New York, Poughkeepsie, Vassar College Art Gallery, Vanessa Bell 1879-1961, 1984, p. 42, no. 9, illustrated on the cover.
G. Naylor (ed.), Bloomsbury The Artists, Authors and Designers, London, 1990, p. 1, illustrated.

Exhibited

New York, Davis and Long, Vanessa Bell: A Retrospective Exhibition, 1980, no. 33.
London, Anthony d'Offay Gallery, The Omega Workshops: Alliance and Enmity in English Art 1911-20, no. 19.
New York, Poughkeepsie, Vassar College Art Gallery, Vanessa Bell 1879-1961, 1984, no. 9.
London, Anthony d'Offay Gallery, In Celebration of Charleston, 1986, no. 11.
New York, Hirschl and Adler, British Modernist Art 1905-1930, November 1987- January 1988, no. 112.

Special notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent. VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 20% on the buyer's premium.

Brought to you by

André Zlattinger

azlattinger@christies.com +44 (0)20 7389 2074

Lot Essay

This design, almost certainly for the headboard (or possibly endboard) of a bedstead, was made in 1917. Although the Omega Workshops was still in business at that time, Vanessa Bell (and Grant) were by then doing very little work for the enterprise and, instead, undertook some private commissions in their own names rather than under the anonymous logo of the Omega. Bell designed a bedhead, for example, for Mary Hutchinson and the present work may be related to that commission. The languorous flowers and acanthus leaves are typical of her decorative motifs and also appear in, for example, her major wall decoration The Tub (Tate Britain), also of 1917.

R.S.

More from Modern British and Irish Art Day Sale

View All

View All