A View of a Field with Trees and a Cow
Mary Constance Lloyd (Sparkbrook 1873 - Paris 1968)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
Unknown
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
550 x 460 mm
Order this imageCollection
Chastleton House, Oxfordshire
NT 1430948
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, A View of a Field with Trees and a Cow by Mary Constance Lloyd (Sparkbrook 1873 - Paris 1968).
Full description
Mary Constance Lloyd (7 October 1873-1 August 1968) – known as Constance – was born at Sparkbrook, Warwickshire, the youngest of twelve children of the steelmaker Samuel (1827-1918) and his wife Jane (1839-95). Her great- great-grandfather had been the founder of Lloyds Bank. Independently wealthy, she had the means to maintain an artistic practice and did not marry. From October 1896 until July 1897 Lloyd attended the Slade School of Fine Art, London, and was tutored by Henry Tonks. Her fellow students included Gwen John, Maude (Grilda) Leigh-Boughton, and Edna Waugh. By 1901 Lloyd took lessons with the French artist Simon Bussy (1870-1954), who became a lasting friend. She lived at Venice in 1903 and Paris in 1904, studying at the Académie Colarossi again with Gwen John. Duncan Grant and Eileen Gray were in her circle. Lloyd was exhibiting in London by 1908. In February 1912 her work was shown at London’s Alpine Club alongside Roger Fry, Grant, Vanessa Bell, and Gwen Raverat. Lloyd also produced designs for the French interior and furniture designer André Groult and for the cabinetmakers Damon & Bertaux. She was a member of the Shakespeare & Company bookshop in Paris. Lloyd continued to live in Paris after the First World War. She attended classes by the influential Cubist painter and teacher André Lhote. She remained friends with Gwen John, who was also living in Paris, and with Duncan Grant. In 1947 Lloyd had a joint exhibition with Janie Bussy (daughter of Simon Bussy and Dorothy Strachey) at the Adams Gallery, London. She exhibited there again – when she was nearly eighty years old – in 1952. Quentin Bell reviewed the exhibition, writing that Lloyd’s ‘great talent lies in finding perfect juxtapositions of colour, of building – with beautiful economy and consummate art – a pattern of closely related tones, so finely balanced that, although her drawing is not remarkable, she creates a completely convincing world of light and space.’ Lloyd died in Paris in 1968. Constance Lloyd is likely to have known Alan Clutton-Brock or his father, both prominent writers and art critics. See also NT 1430959. Text adapted from Elizabeth Crawford, 'One Artist – "Mary Katherine Constance Lloyd" – Dismembered To Create Two: or The Importance Of Biography', Woman and her Sphere, 2023 https://womanandhersphere.com/
Makers and roles
Mary Constance Lloyd (Sparkbrook 1873 - Paris 1968), artist