Colonial Interior in Ceylon
British (English) School
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1907 - 1911
Materials
Oil on paper
Measurements
360 x 470 x 20 mm
Place of origin
Sri Lanka
Order this imageCollection
Monk's House, Rodmell, East Sussex
NT 768452
Summary
Oil painting on paper, Colonial Interior in Ceylon, British (English) School, circa 1910. Interior of a house, three large French windows opening onto a lush woodland garden. Four figures, a man and a woman sitting at a table on the left, writing; an elderly grey-bearded man standing by the centre French Window looking out and an Indian servant seated cross-legged on the right of the centre French window pulling a punka (fan) by a rope. The punka consists of a large white board with a red frill which servant is pulling too and fro above the couple by the table. This is possibly Leonard's Woolf's bungalow in Hambantota or Kandy and possibly depicting his sister Bella Woolf and Robert Lock (d. 1915), the Assistant Director of the nearby Peradeniya Botanical Gardens, whom she married in 1910 as her first husband. Leonard Woolf was in the Civil Service in Ceylon from 1904 to 1911.
Provenance
Acquired by National Trust with Monk's House, 1980
Credit line
Monk’s House, Rodmell, The Virginia & Leonard Woolf Collection (National Trust)
Makers and roles
British (English) School, artist