Roger Fry
Roger Fry's Garden at no 7. Dalmeny Avenue, 1924
Oil on canvas laid onto board
20 x 27 1/8 in. (50.8 x 68.6 cm)
Signed and dated 'Roger Fry.1924.' lower right
Philip Mould & Co.
To view all current artworks for sale visit philipmould.com This atmospheric view of figures in the garden at No.7 Dalmeny Avenue was painted by Roger Fry in 1924 and...
To view all current artworks for sale visit philipmould.com
This atmospheric view of figures in the garden at No.7 Dalmeny Avenue was painted by Roger Fry in 1924 and is in its original hand-painted frame.
Fry lived at Dalmeny Avenue from 1919 to 1926, after his previous home, Durbins, became too expensive and impractical to run.[1] The Bloomsbury and Omega aesthetic suffused Dalmeny Avenue; Fry designed the chairs which surrounded the dining table, painted by Duncan Grant, and Fry’s studio painted in swaths of ‘ochre, black, ultramarine, burnt sienna and pink’ was situated at the top of the house in the attic.[2]
Fry’s polymathic position within the Bloomsbury group is still rightly celebrated today. From 1906-10, Fry was curator of paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, although increasingly during this time he turned his attention to modern French Art. In 1910, he returned to London and staged his seminal exhibition at the Grafton Galleries; Manet and the Post-Impressionists. Regarded as a monumental milestone in the history of British taste, they attracted an enormous amount of publicity, most of it unfavourable. He stated his second Post-Impressionist exhibition two years later in 1912 which included Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. Fry’s relationship with Bell and Grant grew stronger by the day; the three artists began to experiment with avant-garde techniques and were amongst the first painters in Britain to experiment with purely abstract paintings.
A few months after the closing of this exhibition, in 1913, Fry, Bell and Grant established the Omega Workshops. The Omega ethos was governed by an avant-garde aim to celebrate the decorative and break down any segregation between fine art and design. The group focused on decorative interiors as a form of fine art, to be found in anything from pottery to rug design. A year later in 1914 together with Clive Bell, Roger Fry coined formalist art theory, the concept that form itself could convey an emotion, thereafter leading to the development of abstract and modern art.
In her 1977 thesis, Frances Spalding notes a subtle sense of artificiality created by the two women seated in the foreground of this painting.[3] The theatricality of these somewhat staged poses mirrors the immaculate maintenance of the garden itself; symmetrical curved paths wind through the pristine cut lawn which boasts of flowerbeds bursting with multicoloured tulips. It has been suggested by Richard Shone that the two figures could be two of Fry’s sisters, perhaps his two youngest sisters Sara Margery Fry and Anna Ruth Fry. The two figures may alternatively represent the two housekeepers who worked for Fry at Dalmeny Avenue, sisters Mabel and Flossie Haskins.
Fry revisited the fountain depicted in the centre of the composition in another landscape The Ornamental Garden of No. 7 Dalmeny Avenue - painted two years after the present work - currently in the collection of the Islington Local History Centre and Museum, London.
[1] Spaulding, F. (1977) The paintings of Roger Fry. Doctoral, Sheffield Hallam University [available at: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/20388/].
[2] Fry, R. (11 March 1919) Letters of Roger Fry. Vol. II. Sutton, D., (ed.) p.448
[3] Spaulding, F. (1977) The paintings of Roger Fry. Doctoral, Sheffield Hallam University [available at: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/20388/].
This atmospheric view of figures in the garden at No.7 Dalmeny Avenue was painted by Roger Fry in 1924 and is in its original hand-painted frame.
Fry lived at Dalmeny Avenue from 1919 to 1926, after his previous home, Durbins, became too expensive and impractical to run.[1] The Bloomsbury and Omega aesthetic suffused Dalmeny Avenue; Fry designed the chairs which surrounded the dining table, painted by Duncan Grant, and Fry’s studio painted in swaths of ‘ochre, black, ultramarine, burnt sienna and pink’ was situated at the top of the house in the attic.[2]
Fry’s polymathic position within the Bloomsbury group is still rightly celebrated today. From 1906-10, Fry was curator of paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, although increasingly during this time he turned his attention to modern French Art. In 1910, he returned to London and staged his seminal exhibition at the Grafton Galleries; Manet and the Post-Impressionists. Regarded as a monumental milestone in the history of British taste, they attracted an enormous amount of publicity, most of it unfavourable. He stated his second Post-Impressionist exhibition two years later in 1912 which included Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. Fry’s relationship with Bell and Grant grew stronger by the day; the three artists began to experiment with avant-garde techniques and were amongst the first painters in Britain to experiment with purely abstract paintings.
A few months after the closing of this exhibition, in 1913, Fry, Bell and Grant established the Omega Workshops. The Omega ethos was governed by an avant-garde aim to celebrate the decorative and break down any segregation between fine art and design. The group focused on decorative interiors as a form of fine art, to be found in anything from pottery to rug design. A year later in 1914 together with Clive Bell, Roger Fry coined formalist art theory, the concept that form itself could convey an emotion, thereafter leading to the development of abstract and modern art.
In her 1977 thesis, Frances Spalding notes a subtle sense of artificiality created by the two women seated in the foreground of this painting.[3] The theatricality of these somewhat staged poses mirrors the immaculate maintenance of the garden itself; symmetrical curved paths wind through the pristine cut lawn which boasts of flowerbeds bursting with multicoloured tulips. It has been suggested by Richard Shone that the two figures could be two of Fry’s sisters, perhaps his two youngest sisters Sara Margery Fry and Anna Ruth Fry. The two figures may alternatively represent the two housekeepers who worked for Fry at Dalmeny Avenue, sisters Mabel and Flossie Haskins.
Fry revisited the fountain depicted in the centre of the composition in another landscape The Ornamental Garden of No. 7 Dalmeny Avenue - painted two years after the present work - currently in the collection of the Islington Local History Centre and Museum, London.
[1] Spaulding, F. (1977) The paintings of Roger Fry. Doctoral, Sheffield Hallam University [available at: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/20388/].
[2] Fry, R. (11 March 1919) Letters of Roger Fry. Vol. II. Sutton, D., (ed.) p.448
[3] Spaulding, F. (1977) The paintings of Roger Fry. Doctoral, Sheffield Hallam University [available at: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/20388/].
Provenance
The Artist, thence by family descent;Private Collection, Canada.