Flowers

Location

Country: USA
City: Washington DC
Place: British Embassy

The flowers and foliage in this traditional still life by Vanessa Bell are placed in a colourful pattern vase, with the thin gossamer-like petals of the vibrant red poppy ready to fall. The arrangement sits on a small covered table, behind which part of a curtain is shown, and part of a wall or screen on which a human forearm is painted. Bell achieves a harmonious balance between the warm colours of the flowers and those of the surrounding interior.

Still life and flower paintings were several enduring themes of Bell’s painting career. At present, the exact date of Flowers is unknown. The decorative glazing of the vase, and the glimpse of the painted arm behind the flowers, is stylistically similar to some of Bell’s designs for The Omega Workshops. In 1913, Bell and the British artist and critic, Roger Fry, established Omega, an avant-garde design company that produced decorative and applied arts, including furniture, pottery and fabrics, until its closure in 1919. 

Alternatively, Bell may have painted this work during the interwar years, when her focus was still life, landscapes and portraiture. Charleston, the Sussex farmhouse Bell later shared with fellow artist and companion, Duncan Grant, is a prime example of an Omega-decorated house, and it may be that the setting for this painting was Charleston or possibly another interior commissioned privately from Bell and Grant.

Vanessa Bell painted and carried out decorative commissions throughout her life, designing fabrics, cushion covers, book jackets and interiors. Like her sister the writer Virginia Woolf, she belonged to the circle known as the Bloomsbury Group which included Clive Bell, whom she married in 1907. Bell worked for the Omega Workshops, an association of artists/craftsmen active from 1913 to 1919. She was also involved in the decorative work at Charleston Farmhouse near Lewes in Sussex. Now open to the public, this was Bell’s home until her death in 1961. Bell and Grant’s paintings were greatly influenced by exhibitions of Post-Impressionist art in London in 1910 and 1912, in which works by Cézanne, Picasso, Van Gogh and Gauguin were shown.

Places

Subjects

vase (as Subject), painting (as Subject), still life, Bloomsbury Group, poppy, petal, flower, curtain, table (as Subject)

Materials & Techniques

canvas, oil, oil painting

Artist

Vanessa Bell (1879 - 1961)

Title

Flowers

Date

1930s

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

height: 71.50 cm, width: 56.00 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Mayor Gallery, June 1959

Inscription

none

GAC number

4956