Landscape at Asheham House, Lewes
Roger Eliot Fry (London 1866 - London 1934)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
circa 1913 - 1919
Materials
Oil on plywood panel
Measurements
745 x 895 x 60 mm
Place of origin
Lewes
Order this imageCollection
Monk's House, Rodmell, East Sussex
NT 768426
Caption
Asham, or Asheham House as it was originally called and named thus in Virginia Woolf’s diaries, was in Beddingham, near Lewes in Sussex (demolished 1994). It was occupied by Virginia and Leonard Woolf for holidays and weekends, before their marriage and move to Monk’s House, between 1912 and 1919. Her sister, the artist Vanessa Bell, was at the time nearby at Charleston with Duncan Grant (Omega Workshop members, founded by Fry in 1913) although she was married to the critic, Clive Bell. Fry had also had an intimate relationship with ‘Nessa’ and in May 1918 was staying at nearby Bo Peep farm at Alciston (see Graves Art Gallery, Sheffeld for his picture of willows and quarry there). The Woolfs entertained their friends, intellectuals and artists, and held their wedding party at Asheham. It features in Virginia’s short story A Haunted House. In 1906 Roger Fry had ‘discovered’ the art of Paul Cézanne. His style in this picture shows the influence the French artist had on him with the colours in large blocks displaying ‘significant form’: a combination of lines, colours and shapes that move one aesthetically. Fry had introduced the British public to the Post-Impressionists (a term which he coined) in two exhibitions (1910 & 1912) at the Grafton Galleries, London.
Summary
Oil painting on plywood, Landscape at Asheham House by Roger Eliot Fry (London 1866 - London 1934), circa 1913, inscribed (verso) in the artist's hand: Mrs Bell/46 Gordon Sq/WC1.
Provenance
Vanessa Bell (1879 – 1961); acquired by National Trust with Monk's House, 1980
Credit line
Monk’s House, Rodmell, The Virginia & Leonard Woolf Collection (National Trust)
Marks and inscriptions
Mrs Bell/46 Gordon Sq. WC1
Makers and roles
Roger Eliot Fry (London 1866 - London 1934), artist