Vanessa Bell

Nude

c.1922–3

Not on display

Artist: Vanessa Bell 1879–1961
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 813 × 654 mm
frame: 1028 × 865 × 110 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Bequeathed by Frank Hindley Smith 1940
Reference: N05077

Display caption

Vanessa Bell usually painted still lifes and portraits of her family, but she experimented briefly with abstract art when encouraged by Roger Fry and Duncan Grant. The subject here is a professional model, and the picture was probably painted as an exercise when Bell returned seriously to painting after bringing up her daughter. She then visited Paris, where she admired the new paintings by Picasso of monumental nudes. Her still lifes always give a sense of the pleasure of touch, with warm earth colours, and these are also features of her appraisal of this plump young woman.
This painting was chosen by Wendy Cope.

Gallery label, August 2004

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Catalogue entry

N05077 NUDE c. 1922–3

Not inscribed.
Canvas, 32×25 3/4 (81×65).
Bequeathed by Frank Hindley Smith 1940.
Coll: P.M. Turner; Frank Hindley Smith 1928.
Exh: (?) London Group, October–November 1924 (12).

Painted in London about 1922 or 1923 (letter from the artist, 22 February 1956).

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I