John Swarbrooke Fine Art is delighted to present our latest exhibition, Pixerina Witcherina, from 16-22 June, featuring works by the Bloomsbury Group including Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant alongside a new series of drawings by Guillermo Martín Bermejo, whose work was recently acquired by the National Portrait Gallery.
Coinciding with the centenary of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, the exhibition will be held in Fitzroy Square in association with the Backroom Foundation, James Freeman Gallery and Peter Harrington Rare Books.
To enquire about an artwork please email art@johnswarbrooke.com.
Vanessa BELL (1879-1961)
Newhaven, 1926
signed with initials lower right VB
oil on canvas
40.6 x 57.2 cm. (16 x 22½ in.)
£82,500 + ARR
Provenance:
Sale; Christie's, London, 10 November 1989, lot 276
Sale; Christie's, London, 7 December 2006, lot 90.
Private Collection, UK, acquired at the above sale.
Their sale; Bonham’s, London, 24 Nov. 2021, lot 30.
Private Collection, UK, acquired at the above sale.
Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant frequently drove from Charleston to nearby Newhaven, in East Sussex, to paint the harbour and nearby cliffs. A similar example to the present work hangs in Monk’s House (Virginia and Leonard Woolf's country retreat, now in the ownership of the National Trust) located four miles inland from Newhaven Harbour.
Simon BUSSY (1870-1954)
Red Deer, 1920s
signed lower right Simon Bussy
pastel on paper
24 x 19 cm. (9½ x 7½ in.)
£16,500
Provenance:
Private Collection, UK
Simon Bussy was a virtuoso of pastels whom Duncan Grant heralded as ‘Mon Maitre’ (‘my master’). He was a devoted admirer of the natural world in all its manifestations and his passion is evident through the knowledge and honesty with which he interprets his subjects. Of Bussy’s animal works, the eminent artist, writer and curator Lawrence Gowing once surmised: ‘Ah, I see what it is, every bird or fish is a self-portrait.’ (L. Gowing quoted in M. A. Caws, Bloomsbury and France. Oxford, 2000).
Duncan GRANT (1885-1978)
Portrait of a Young Man, 1961
signed and dated upper right D Grant 1961
oil on canvas board
43 x 37 cm. (17 x 14½ in.)
On loan
Painted in Venice in Autumn 1961, the sitter was the young son of the family who ran the Hotel Seguso where Grant was staying during this time.
The model in this work posed for Grant's last large figure composition The Gymnasium in the 1960s which has since been destroyed.
Duncan GRANT (1885-1978)
Still life with fruit and a jug, 1965
signed and dated lower right D. Grant/-/60
oil on paper laid on board
38.2 x 79.2 cm. (15 x 31¼ in.)
£75,000 + ARR
Provenance:
The Artist, c. 1965
Private Collection, acquired from the above.
Their sale; Christie’s, London, 2 March 1979, lot 97 (as Still Life with Fruit and Jug on a Table)
The Belgrave Gallery, London.
Private Collection, UK, acquired from the above; and thence by descent to
Private Collection, UK.
Their sale; Bonham’s, London, 30 June 2021, lot 10.
Private Collection, UK, acquired at the above sale.
In his later years, Duncan Grant frequently included works of art in his still lifes. They ranged from sculpture (Stephen Tomlin's bust of Virginia Woolf), furniture (the Omega Workshops screen in his studio at Charleston) to Japanese art (a Sharaku textile) and works by Matisse (Still life with Matisse, Royal Collection). More often, he uses designs by himself as backgrounds for flowers and fruit. The present work shows a decorative design pinned to the wall and is highly typical of Grant’s decorative designs of the 1950s and 1960s. This still life was probably painted in Grant’s and Vanessa Bell’s London flat rather than at Charleston.
Duncan GRANT (1885-1978)
Angelica Painting at Charleston, c. 1940
signed upper right D Grant.
oil on paper laid on board
77.2 x 51.6 cm. (30⅜ x 20⅜ in.)
On loan
The setting for this delightfully spontaneous image is the main studio at Charleston. Grant shows his daughter at work (possibly on a still life), facing the main door of the room, some flowers on a chest to the left. It is unlikely that Grant would have asked her to pose. He would have been at work himself but would suddenly have seen the possibilities of the subject and swiftly brushed it in, only perhaps asking her occasionally to hold the position of her painting arm or of her feet. This work was almost certainly painted before Angelica's marriage to David Garnett in 1942, when she moved away from Charleston.
It is worth noting that the chair, at Angelica's right, is a Heal's chair given to Vanessa Bell by her sister Virginia. It was roundly condemned for its modernity by Walter Sickert on a visit to Vanessa's London studio.
Vanessa BELL (1879-1961)
Portrait of Angelica Garnett, c. 1930
with estate stamp lower right
pencil on paper
22.5 x 18.5 cm. (8 ⅘ x 7¼ in.)
£5,000 + ARR
Duncan GRANT (1885-1978)
Still Life with Decanter, c. 1917
graphite pencil on paper
22.9 x 30.5 cm. (9 x 12 in.)
£14,500 + ARR
Provenance:
The Artist.
Richard Shone, gifted by the above, c. 1973.
Private Collection, London.
Still Life with Decanter is a closely observed, lively executed drawing from the early post-impressionist period of Duncan Grant’s career. The picture was made using only short strokes of the pencil. The broken silhouettes of each object are suggested using marks similar to areas of parallel hatching, which create shading from dense scribbles of short lines. The short, hatched markings relate to the mode of hatched, handicraft brushstrokes that Grant and some of his peers at the Omega Workshops used between 1913 and 1919.
Duncan GRANT (1885-1978)
The Pond at Charleston, 1956
signed and dated lower right d. Grant:/56
oil on board
55.7 x 76.2 cm. (22 x 30 in.)
On loan
The present work depicts Firle Beacon viewed from his home in Charleston, where Grant moved at the height of the First World War in 1916.
Duncan GRANT (1885-1978)
Still Life, c. 1917-18
oil on canvas
56 x 49.5 cm. (22 x 19½ in.)
£95,000 + ARR
Provenance:
Sir John Rothenstein, UK; and thence by descent to
Private Collection, UK.
Exhibited:
1959, London, Tate Gallery, Duncan Grant: A Retrospective Exhibition, 12 May - 20 June 1959, cat. no. 32 (titled Dahlias, dated c. 1913).
Still Life was painted at the height of Duncan Grant’s post-impressionist period in the years immediately after he and Vanessa Bell moved to Charleston Farmhouse, Sussex, in autumn 1916. The painting depicts three cut flowers - clematis or possibly dahlias - standing in a goblet. The goblet in Still Life can be identified as a specific object now in the Charleston Trust’s collection. This receptacle dates to the nineteenth century and has a distinctive and elaborately moulded stem. It is made of milk glass - a translucent material reminiscent of porcelain - and decorated with a thick band of gilding around the rim, which is clearly visible in Grant’s painting.
Grant and Bell decorated and furnished the house at Charleston in a richly eclectic style entirely novel for its period. They used a mixture of outmoded Victorian fabrics and furniture, eclectic objects acquired variously from the Omega Workshops (of which they were both company directors) and as gifts from friends, and hand-decorated inventions of their own, especially on the walls, firescreens and other semi-permanent fittings. This environment became a key component of both Grant and Bell’s still-life paintings, with objects and their settings translated into pictorial terms. Their unusual, visually interesting possessions and the interior spaces they crafted were essential ingredients in their creative endeavour, and Grant’s Still Life and other paintings like it belong to a broad spectrum of artistic activity. As with other paintings made in 1917 and 1918, Grant treated the picture surface of Still Life as a solid mosaic of thick paint. Neighbouring areas were painted in distinct but finely graded tonal contrasts of light and dark.
Still Life was once owned by Sir John Rothenstein, director of the Tate Gallery between 1938 and 1964.
Duncan GRANT (1885-1978)
Venice, 1951
signed lower left d. Grant/ 1951
oil on canvas
58 x 102 cm. (22 ⅞ x 40 ⅛ in.)
£19,500 + ARR
Provenance:
Anon. sale; Bonhams, London, 15 June 2004, lot 26.
Private Collection, UK; thence by descent to
Private Collection, UK.
Anon. sale; Sotheby's, London, 23 November 2022, lot 359.
Private Collection, UK.
Duncan GRANT (1885-1978)
Harp Player, c. 1930
signed lower left DG
ink on paper
19 x 15 cm. (7½ x 5¾ in.)
£6,500 + ARR
Provenance:
The Bloomsbury Workshop, London.
Private Collection.
This watercolour drawing uses the original, primitivist figure type that Grant and other avant-garde artists began to use around 1910 - the arms and legs are thick and rotund, the facial features playfully simplified. The imagery of the harpist has a classical connotation (perhaps it relates to the mythic Orpheus), and Grant and his Bloomsbury confreres were proponents of an eclectic modernism that freely brought together historical stylistic references with formalist techniques of simplification and exaggeration.
Duncan GRANT (1885-1978)
Woodland. c. 1912
oil on board
64 x 45 cm. (25 x 17½ in.)
On loan
The present work was probably painted in September 1912 when Grant was staying with Clive and Vanessa Bell at Virginia Wool’'s rented property, Asheham House, in the Sussex Downs. If 1912 is the correct date, then the picture was painted in the year Grant was still a member of the Camden Town Group (he showed one painting in the 2nd of the Group's exhibitions, December 1911). Woodland was the only work by Grant selected for the retrospective of the Group in 1930 at the Leicester Galleries and presumably came from the artist.
Augustus JOHN OM RA (1878-1961)
The Little Railway, Martigues, c. 1928
signed lower left John
oil on canvas
53.3 x 73 cm. (21 x 28¾ in.)
On loan
Martigues, a little town in Provence, is situated half-way between Arles and Marseilles. John tells us that Provence ‘had been for years the goal of my dreams’ and Martigues was, of all the towns there, the one for which he had most affection. John travelled round Provence in search of the ideal place: ‘With a feeling that I was going to find what I was seeking, an anchorage at last, I returned from Marseilles, and, changing at Pas des Lanciers, took the little railway which leads to Martigues. On arriving my premonition proved correct: there was no need to seek further.’
Henry LAMB MC RA (1883-1960)
Portrait of Gola Islander, c. 1912-13
stamped lower right Lamb; inscribed lower right Gola Island
watercolour and black chalk on paper
29 x 23 cm. (11⅜ x 9 in.)
£12,500 + ARR
Provenance:
Deborah, Duchess Of Devonshire, UK.
Their sale; Sotheby's, London, 2 March 2016, lot 52.
Private Collection, UK
Henry Lamb was closely associated with the Bloomsbury Group and is best known for his sensitive portraits of fellow members, painted in the restrained Post-Impressionist style that characterised his work throughout his career.
Lamb made two trips to north-west Ireland in 1912 and 1913. It was during this time that he visited the tiny island of Gola, off the coast of Donegal. Like Brittany, Gola was an inspiring environment, speaking of an older, simpler world. Again, Lamb stayed in the home of a local farming family. ‘I find myself in a paradise’, he wrote from there. ‘There are mountains, a lake, rocks, cliffs, caves and white strands: the people are more lovely and even more angelically dispositioned than on the mainland and certainly more sensible.’ He was delighted that they ‘all promise to sit for me. So I should pass a month agreeable enough even if the weather is bad: at present it is brilliant, only too breezy. The wind never drops [...]. This makes outdoor sketching out of the question [...].’ (K. Clements, Henry Lamb: The Artist and his Friends, The Redcliffe Press, 1985, pp. 116-117.)
Lamb sent some of the oil portraits he made in Ireland to the third exhibition of the Camden Town Group, which opened in London in December 1912. Two works made during this visit, Head of an Irish Girl and Irish Girls, are now in the Tate collection.
Henry LAMB MC RA (1883-1960)
Potato Gatherers, 1911–12
oil on panel
19 x 24 cm. (7 ½ x 9 ½ in.)
£12,500 + ARR
Provenance:
Anon. sale; deVeres, Dublin, 9 October 2012, lot 7.
Private Collection.
This painting dates to Henry Lamb’s time in Brittany, where he focussed on the subject of peasants working in the landscape.
Stephen TOMLIN (1901-1937)
Lytton Strachey (1880-1932), 1929
plaster (painted)
47.5 cm. (18¾ in.)
£72,500 + ARR
Provenance:
The artist.
Julia Gowing (formerly Tomlin, née Strachey), the artist’s wife;
By family descent, until 2022.
Philip Mould & Company, acquired from the above.
Literature:
O. Garnett, The Sculpture of Stephen Tomlin, Unpublished Thesis, 1979, p. 7, no. 25b, figs. 94 & 95 (illus.).
M. Bloch and S. Fox, The Bloomsbury Stud: The Life of Stephen ‘Tommy’ Tomlin, London: M.A.B., 2023, 2nd ed, p. 246.
“The general impression is so superb, that I am beginning to be afraid that I shall find it rather difficult to live up to.” - Lytton Strachey, 1929
Of the principal representations of Lytton Strachey, none are as affecting as this likeness, which can be considered one of Stephen Tomlin’s masterpieces. Strachey’s expressive features, heightened by the visible marks of modelling, succeed in producing a characterisation that imparts the veneration in which Tomlin and others held him, and captures the perspicacity for which the biographer and writer was famous.
Sir Matthew SMITH (1879-1959)
Flowers in a Vase
signed with initials lower left
oil on canvas
62 x 51 cm. (24½ x 20 in.)
On loan
This painting was formerly in the collection of Vivien Leigh and is illustrated in a photo of her home at Tickerage Mill (Hugo Vickers, Vivien Leigh, London, 1988, pps. 286-287.)
A selection of drawings by Vanessa Bell made during trips to Spain with Duncan Grant from May-June 1923 and Venice from May-June 1926.
Vanessa BELL (1879-1961)
Study of a Man, Zaragoza, 1923
pencil on paper
9 cm. x 14.5 cm. (3½ x 5⅔)
£1,950 + ARR
Vanessa BELL (1879-1961)
Man in a Cafe, Venice, 1926
pencil on paper
16.5 x 19.5 cm. (6½ x 7¾ in.)
£1,700 + ARR
In a letter to John Maynard Keynes on 30 May 1926, Vanessa Bell describes spending hours sketching people in the famous Caffe Florian in Venice during her 1926 trip there: "[W]e have heavenly ices at Florian's most evenings & draw the company until they get too restive and suspicious." (autograph letter from Vanessa Bell to J. M. Keynes May 30, 1926, Collection of Morgan Library & Museum, New York, acc: MA 3448.77). These are the likely subject matter of the present drawings and other sheets from the same sketchbook.
Vanessa BELL (1879-1961)
Maître’D at Caffè Florian, Venice, 1926
pencil on paper
16.5 x 19.5 cm. (6½ x 7¾ in.)
£2,500 + ARR
Vanessa BELL (1879-1961)
Two Men Seated in a Café, Venice, 1926
pencil on paper
16.5 x 19.5 cm. (6½ x 7¾ in.)
£1,750 + ARR
Vanessa BELL (1879-1961)
Flamenco Dancer
pencil on paper
9 x 16 cm. (3 ½ x 6 ⅓ in.)
£1950 + ARR
Vanessa BELL (1879-1961)
Study of a Man Asleep, Venice, 1926
pencil on paper
18 x 15.5 cm. (7 x 6⅕ in.)
£1,750 + ARR
Vanessa BELL (1879-1961)
Man in a Hat in a Venetian Café, 1926
pencil on paper
16.5 x 19.5 cm. (6½ x 7¾ in.)
£1,950 + ARR
Vanessa BELL (1879-1961)
Still Life with Cello and Music Stand
pencil on paper
16.5 x 19.5 cm. (6½ x 7¾ in.)
£2,300 + ARR
Vanessa BELL (1879-1961)
Studies of Boys, Zaragoza, 1923
pencil on paper
9 x 16 cm. (3 ½ x 6 ⅓ in.)
£950 + ARR
To discuss interest in works in this exhibition please email art@johnswarbrooke.com