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A Highly Important Collection of Works by Bloomsbury Artists from a Private North American Collection

Vanessa Bell (1879-1961)

Tea Things

Details

Vanessa Bell (1879-1961)
Tea Things
signed and dated 'V Bell 19' (lower right)
oil on panel
14¾ x 37 in. (37.5 x 94 cm.)

Provenance

Clive Bell, until his death in 1964.
Artist's Estate.
with Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London, where purchased by the present owner.

Literature

G. Naylor (ed.), Bloomsbury The Artists, Authors and Designers, London, 1990, p. 22, illustrated, dated 1913.

Exhibited

London, Mansard Gallery, Heal's, The New Movement in Art, September - October 1917, no. 11: this exhibition travelled to Birmingham.
London, A.I.A. Gallery, Fitzroy Street Retrospective 1910-1920, July 1955, no. 22.
London, Arts Council of Great Britain, Arts Council Gallery, Vanessa Bell Memorial Exhibition of Paintings, February - March 1964, no. 38: this exhibition travelled to Plymouth, City Art Gallery, April - May 1964; Bolton, Museum and Art Gallery May 1964; Leeds, City Art Gallery, June 1964; Norwich, Castle Museum, July 1964; and Brighton, Art Gallery, August 1964.
New York, Davis and Long, Vanessa Bell A Retrospective Exhibition, April - May 1980, no. 34.
Canterbury, Royal Museum, Vanessa Bell, Paintings 1910-1920, April - May 1983, no. 37.
London, Anthony d'Offay Gallery, The Omega Workshops Alliance and Enmity in English Art 1911-1920, January - March 1984, no. 21.

Special Notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent. VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 20% on the buyer's premium.

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Lot Essay

The unusually horizontal format of this still life suggests that it may have begun life as a panel decoration. A work by Bell with the same title was exhibited in The New Movement in Art held in 1917 at the Mansard Gallery, Heal's, in London. If this is the same painting, it was obviously re-worked and dated 1919. The objects of the still life - the white cups and saucers, edged in red, and the painted tray were Charlestonian (for the cup and saucer and a similar tray, see Duncan Grant's Charleston still life (here lot 65). The fusion of a possible decorative project with a careful solidity of handling mark this transitional phase in Bell's post-war work.

Soon after completion, the painting seems to have gone to Clive Bell's flat in Gordon Square. It is listed as his property in Vanessa Bell's 1950 inventory of pictures at Charleston. It hung for many years above a large mirror in Duncan Grant's bedroom (where a copy of the painting now hangs).

R.S.

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