Apples
Vanessa Bell (Kensington 1879 – Firle 1961)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
circa 1918 (initialed) - 1919 (exh)
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
520 x 445 x 30 mm
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Monk's House, Rodmell, East Sussex
NT 768421
Caption
This still life was probably painted a little before the artist joined The London Group and showed it in their 1919 exhibition. Its skewed perspective demonstrates the influence of Cézanne on her. Her friend, the economist John Maynard Keynes, had bought an Apples picture by him, of between 1878 and 1877, in the Degas studio sale in Paris in March 1918 (now on loan to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge). Known as ‘the most important woman painter in Europe’ at the time, it shows Vanessa Bell’s personal response to the French post-impressionist artist and a return to realism which was a contrast to the recent experiments in abstraction both in Britain and abroad.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Apples by Vanessa Bell (Kensington 1879 – Firle 1961), circa 1918 - 1919, signed (lower right) V.B. Five apples on a plate. Exhibited at the 11th London Group Exhibition, The Mansard Gallery, November 1919.
Provenance
Acquired by National Trust with Monk's House in 1980
Credit line
Monk's House, The Woolf Collection (National Trust)
Marks and inscriptions
Recto: Signed "VB" (lower right)
Makers and roles
Vanessa Bell (Kensington 1879 – Firle 1961), artist
Exhibition history
Uproar! the First 50 years of the London Group, Ben Uri Gallery, London, 2013 - 2014, no.14
References
Uproar! The First 50 years of the London Group 1913-63, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, The London Jewish Museum of Art, 30 Oct 2013 - 2 March 2014, 14 Strachey 2018: Nino Strachey, ‘Virginia Woolf: Patron and Maker’, National Trust Historic Houses & Collections Annual, Apollo, 2018, pp.60-1