Lilies and Iris

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Maker


1879-1961

Title

Lilies and Iris

Date of Production

(circa) 1919

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

Height: 74 cm (canvas)
Width: 45.8 cm (canvas)

Object Number

P.1935.RF.25

Mode of Acquisition

Roger Fry Trustees, gift, 1935

Credit

Courtauld Gallery, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust)

Location

On display

Keywords

Label Text

Vanessa Bell’s love of flowers is apparent throughout her career and they appear in much of her work, whether real, or paper flowers made for the Omega workshop. This sober arrangement of a few flowers in a distinctive and prominent vase set against a patterned background is typical of her still-life painting in the immediate post-war period. The vase is placed on the kind of painted rush-seated chair she would have used at Charleston farmhouse in Sussex, where she and Duncan Grant went to live in 1916. The shapes of chair-back and vase echo each other, and the bold design in the background repeats the outlines of the arum lilies.

Inscriptions

Inscription: inscription : signed : lower left & recto : : V Bell

Provenance

Roger Eliot Fry (1866 - 1934); Gift of the Roger Fry Trustees, 1935

Exhibition History

Sussex Modernism, Towner, Eastbourne, 23/05/2025-28/09/2025
Vanessa Bell: A Pioneer of Modern Art, Courtauld Gallery, London, 25/05/2024-06/10/2024
Courtauld Connects Regional Programme, Ulster Museum, Belfast, 17/06/2022-16/10/2022
...More
Vanessa Bell (1879-1961), Dulwich Picture Gallery, 08/02/2017-04/06/2017
Chequers, England, 1983-85
...Less

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