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Lot Essay
Roger Fry came relatively late in his painting to the subjects of flowers and still life. Landscape and portraiture were his predominant themes until about 1911-12 when still life began to preoccupy him. His exhibition in November 1917 at London’s Carfax Gallery, entirely devoted to flower pieces, came as a surprise. It sold well and received favourable reviews. In The Burlington Magazine, Walter Sickert praised the paintings as ‘serious and thoughtful work, full of feeling for the possible dignity of this branch of still life’. (Burlington Magazine, 1918, no. 32, p.38) The reviewer in The Times wrote that the works were at their best when not too ‘severely designed’ and mentioned the present painting Tulips (cat. no. 12) as among the successes of the exhibition.
Fry was delighted and wrote to his mother (3rd December 1917) of the ‘extraordinary success of my show of flower pieces…Out of twenty pictures twelve are already sold and it looks as tho’ more were going. Of course, my prices are very low, but I think it’s remarkable for these days’ (D. Sutton, ed. Letters of Roger Fry, London 1972, vol.2, p.420). During the months in which Fry made these paintings he was at a low ebb in his personal life, his health was unreliable, the Omega Workshops were not thriving and foreign travel was almost impossible. Hours spent painting still life in his Fitzroy Street studio were some consolation and the success of his exhibition obviously boosted his morale.
The tulips in this work (possibly from the garden of Durbins, his house at Guildford) are on their last legs, the petals curling into fantastic shapes, reminiscent of the paper flowers produced at the Omega. Fry delighted in painting such flowers as lilies and irises for their complex arrangement of petals. The black and white objects on the table are pots from the Omega. Fry continued to paint flowers for the rest of his life. In 1918 he was suggesting to Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant what kinds of plants they should have in their garden at Charleston as suitable subjects for the brush. These included red hot pokers and artichokes, a further demonstration of his taste for the flamboyant.
We are very grateful to Richard Shone for his assistance with cataloguing this lot.
Fry was delighted and wrote to his mother (3rd December 1917) of the ‘extraordinary success of my show of flower pieces…Out of twenty pictures twelve are already sold and it looks as tho’ more were going. Of course, my prices are very low, but I think it’s remarkable for these days’ (D. Sutton, ed. Letters of Roger Fry, London 1972, vol.2, p.420). During the months in which Fry made these paintings he was at a low ebb in his personal life, his health was unreliable, the Omega Workshops were not thriving and foreign travel was almost impossible. Hours spent painting still life in his Fitzroy Street studio were some consolation and the success of his exhibition obviously boosted his morale.
The tulips in this work (possibly from the garden of Durbins, his house at Guildford) are on their last legs, the petals curling into fantastic shapes, reminiscent of the paper flowers produced at the Omega. Fry delighted in painting such flowers as lilies and irises for their complex arrangement of petals. The black and white objects on the table are pots from the Omega. Fry continued to paint flowers for the rest of his life. In 1918 he was suggesting to Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant what kinds of plants they should have in their garden at Charleston as suitable subjects for the brush. These included red hot pokers and artichokes, a further demonstration of his taste for the flamboyant.
We are very grateful to Richard Shone for his assistance with cataloguing this lot.