Vanessa Bell (British, 1879-1961) Duncan Grant 46 x 35.5 cm. (18 x 14 in.) (Painted in 1942)

Vanessa Bell (British, 1879-1961) Duncan Grant oil on canvas 46 x 35.5 cm. (18 x 14 in.) Painted in 1942 Footnotes: Provenance With The Bloomsbury Workshop, where acquired by the present owners Private Collection, U.K. In about 1940, Vanessa Bell conceived the idea of a series of head-and-shoulder portraits of her friends, all of whom were members of Bloomsbury's Memoir Club. The works were to be of the same size, the subjects painted within an oval format surrounded by a grey background. Eventually she persuaded Duncan Grant to join her in this enterprise. Paintings were sporadically produced, the last known one being by Grant of Bell herself, based on a painting of her from circa 1933. Unfortunately, the series was not as lively or revealing as we might have hoped; and nor did it progress very far. One reason may be that most of the pictures were 'copied' from earlier paintings and drawings. The first that we know is Bell's portrait of E.M. Forster, carried out on a visit Forster paid to Charleston in 1940 to attend a Memoir Club meeting. It is an excellent likeness and benefits from an actual sitting in the studio. Another contribution from about this time is Grant's charming head of Lydia Lopokova (National Portrait Gallery) painted from a drawing made twenty years earlier. Bell's sister Virginia had died in 1941 and Bell attempted to include her likeness posthumously. A watercolour head inside the oval format was produced but no painting resulted. The present work shows Grant as a young man, although he was fifty-seven years old in 1942. In other portraits of him by Bell, he is idealised and made to look younger than he was. This partly accounted for by Bell's use of an earlier drawing as her source and partly for some psychological necessity – that she was still living with the precocious young painter, six years younger than herself, from the start of their relationship in the First World War. She has caught here a note of melancholy or introspection in Grant's features, one that his friends often noted and which can be seen in a number of photographs. It is interesting to find Bell very much in retrospective mood at this time. She produced her well-known group portrait of the Memoir Club in session (National Portrait Gallery) with, hanging on the wall, portraits of those member who were no longer alive – Lytton Strachey, Roger Fry and Virginia Woolf. We are grateful to Richard Shone for compiling this catalogue entry. This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: AR AR Goods subject to Artists Resale Right Additional Premium. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing