Duncan Grant

Sir Harry and Lady Lintott
Crane Kalman Gallery, London, where acquired by the present owners, 5th June 2002

There are numerous small vertical cracks in both panels. The paint surface has been affected by the vetical cracks in the panels. There are spots of paint abrasion in the lower corners of both panels, and in a few places across the surface of the panels. Examination under ultra-violet light reveals scattered lines of retouching, predominantly to the areas of the paint surface where the cracking has been more dramatic. There are also areas of fluorescence which correspond to the artist's use of pigment. Held in shaped frames. Please telephone the department on 020 7293 5381 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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Duncan Grant was no stranger to gramophones and installed one at his home, Charleston, Sussex, during the First World War. In the 1920s he decorated several gramophone cupboards, notably for Maynard Keynes, Leonard and Virginia Woolf and Raymond Mortimer. The two works offered here constitute his last brush with recorded sound. The decorations, made to cover two large, free-standing loudspeakers, were commissioned in 1969 by Sir Henry (Harry) Lintott and his wife Margaret for their house at Rodmell, not far from Charleston. Lintott (1908-95) had been an undergraduate friend of Julian Bell, an Apostle at Cambridge, a distinguished civil servant and eventually the British High Commissioner in Canada. He and his wife remained on the warmest terms with the Bell family and Leonard Woolf (also living in Rodmell). A painting by Jean Marchand, once owned by Roger Fry, was bought for and given to Charleston by Lady Lintott in 1995 in memory of her husband.

Duncan Grant painted the works in his studio at Charleston, making large-scale cartoons from drawings and cut-out shapes which were finally transferred to the boards, each with a central sound-aperture. They are in his assured late semi-figurative decorative style which found expression in several private commissions at this time.

We are grateful to Richard Shone for his kind assistance with the cataloguing of this lot.