ⓒ Work in copyright. All rights reserved.

Study of Duncan Grant for 'Evening in the Country'

Maker

(artist)
1879-1961

Title

Study of Duncan Grant for 'Evening in the Country'

Date of Production

1944

Medium

oil paint and bodycolour on wove paper, with pinholes at the upper corners

Dimensions

Height: 45.8 cm
Width: 28 cm

Accession Number

P.2024.XX.1

Mode of Acquisition

gift, 2024

Credit

The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust). Gift of Minta Collins, 2024, in gratitude for inspiring teaching at the Courtauld Institute of Art.

Copyright

© Estate of Vanessa Bell. All rights reserved, DACS 2024

Location

Not currently on display

Label Text

Vanessa Bell produced this portrait sketch of Duncan Grant almost 40 years after the pair first met and embarked on a lifelong creative partnership. Its rapid, loose brushwork suggests that it was made from life, likely as a preparatory study for a known painting that shows Grant and Bell’s husband seated in the Garden Room of their Sussex home, Charleston.

Though dating from Bell’s later, more naturalistic, period, the work recalls her earlier experimentation with abstraction and colour in the daring yellow dashes on Grant’s shoulder and in the blocky strokes that construct his cheek and temple.

Provenance

Angelica Garnett; Anthony d'Offay, where acquired by Minta Collins, October 1979; gift to The Courtauld, 2024.

Inscriptions

Stamp: Recto: lower right, stamped in black: VB studio stamp.

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