Duncan Grant

Independent Gallery, London, where acquired by Lytton Strachey, 1923
Dora Carrington, 1932
Acquired by Ralph and Frances Partridge in 1932, and thence by descent to the present owner

London, Independent Gallery, Recent Paintings and Drawings by Duncan Grant, June 1923, cat. no.26 (as Still Life with Roses);
London, Tate, Duncan Grant: A Retrospective Exhibition, May - June 1959, cat. no.47.

Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, Hogarth Press, London, illustrated pl.22;
Michael Holroyd, Lytton Strachey, Heinemann, London, 1968, Vol.II, illustrated opp. p.597 (where seen in situ at Ham Spray House).

Original canvas. The canvas undulates slightly in places, but otherwise appears sound. There is a slight scuff in the lower right corner and a scratch in the lower left corner. There are some fine lines of craquelure apparent to the rose in the centre of the work and to the sculpture, with one or two fine lines elsewhere. There is a line of craquelure and two associated spots of loss and slight lifting in the brown pigment near the centre of the left vertical edge. There is evidence of a previous frame around the edges of the work, and the varnish is slightly discoloured. There is some surface dirt to the work. Ultraviolet light reveals a thick layer of discoloured varnish. There are otherwise no obvious signs of fluorescence or retouching. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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We are grateful to Richard Shone for his kind assistance with the cataloguing of the present work, and for preparing the catalogue note.

Lytton Strachey owned at least four substantial paintings by his cousin Duncan Grant, including the present work, Venus and Adonis (Tate, London) and a still life also of 1922 (Southampton Art Gallery). The pictures were hung at Ham Spray House, the home shared by Strachey with Ralph Partridge and the painter Dora Carrington. The present work marks a notable moment of austerity and low-key colour characteristic of a number of Grant’s still lifes from about 1921 to 1923. Painted in Grant’s London studio at 8 Fitzroy Street, the work includes a classic plaster head (now in the hall at Charleston, the artist’s Sussex home) of circa 1920 by the French sculptor Marcel Gimond who made portrait heads of, among others,  Roger Fry and Vanessa Bell.