Nursery Tea

Details

Vanessa Bell (1879-1961)
Nursery Tea
oil on canvas
30 x 41½ in. (76.2 x 105.4 cm.)
Painted circa 1912.

Provenance

Angelica Garnett, the artist's daughter.
with New Grafton Gallery, London.
with Roy Miles Gallery, London.
Frances Spalding.
Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 12 November 1987, lot 204.

Literature

R. Shone, Bloomsbury Portraits, Oxford, 1976, p. 76, pl. 39.
Burlington Magazine, December 1975, CXVII, no. 873, pl. 60.
P. Fletcher, A Child's learning of English, London, 1985, illustrated on the cover.
F. Spalding, Vanessa Bell, London, 1983, pp. 105, 126.
Exhibition catalogue, Modern Art in Britain 1910-1914, London, Barbican Gallery, February - May 1997, p. 86, no. 5, illustrated.
Exhibition catalogue, The Art of Bloomsbury, London, Tate Gallery, November 1999 - January 2000, p. 32, fig. 37.

Exhibited

London, New Grafton Gallery, A Miscellany of English Painting and Drawing 1900-1940, October - November 1975, no. 9.
Sheffield, Mappin Art Gallery, Vanessa Bell Centenary Exhibition, September - October 1979, no. 7: this exhibition travelled to Portsmouth, City Museum and Art Gallery, October - November 1979.
Nottingham, Castle Museum, Women's Art Show 1950-1970, 1982, no. 87.
Canterbury, The Royal Museum, Vanessa Bell; Paintings 1910-1920, April - May 1983, no. 14.
Woollahra, D.C. Art, Modern British Art of the 20th Century, August - September 1988, catalogue not traced.
London, Barbican Art Gallery, Modern Art in Britain 1910-1914, February - May 1997, no. 5.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Sale room notice

Please note the additional exhibition and literature reference for this lot:

EXHIBITION
London, Kenwood House, Eat, Drink and Be Merry - The British at Table, June - September 2000.

LITERATURE
Exhibition catalogue, Eat, Drink and Be Merry - The British at Table 1600-2000, London, Kenwood House, June - September 2000, p. 124, fig. 81.

Lot Essay

This painting shows the artist's two young children, Julian (b. 1908) and, on the left, Quentin (b. 1910) with two nursemaids, almost certainly at the Bell family home, 46 Gordon Square, London. It belongs to the earliest period of Vanessa Bell's work to show the influence of Matisse and the Post-Impressionists, while at the same time retaining her close observation of domestic and family life as seen in comparable works from 1912 such as Studland Beach (Tate, London) and The Bedroom, Gordon Square (Adelaide Art Gallery), both of which it probably pre-dates. The formal organisation of the canvas, with its simplified planes and relatively austere composition, was Bell's overriding interest at this moment, before a more adventurous palette became a hallmark of her painting in the following year. Bell commented on her methods in this painting in a letter to Roger Fry of 5th June 1912, saying she was attempting 'to paint as if I were mosaicing - not by painting in spots but by considering the picture as patches each of which has to be filled by the definite space of colour' (Tate Gallery Archive). A number of important early works by Bell remained unexhibited in her lifetime.

R.S.

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