Lilies and Iris
Copyright
© Estate of Vanessa Bell. All rights reserved, DACS 2023
Image: Courtauld
Image: Courtauld
ⓒ Work in copyright. All rights reserved.
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)
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
...MoreVanessa Bell (1879-1961), Dulwich Picture Gallery, 08/02/2017-04/06/2017
Chequers, England, 1983-85
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