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Duncan Grant was a central figure in the Bloomsbury Group, a liberal band of artists, writers, and intellectuals whose theories and experiments drastically refashioned the landscape of British modernism.
Grant spent his early career studying the old masters in Italy, and regularly returned throughout his life. This sunlit landscape was likely painted during one of his summer sojourns in the mid-1950s to the charming town of Asolo, in the Veneto Region of Northern Italy. Known as the ‘city of a hundred horizons’ due to its mountainous terrain, many artistic and literary individuals have been attracted to the picturesque hill-town of Asolo. It may have been completed in the Spring of 1955, whilst Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell were staying at La Mura, a large house with extensive views built on the town walls of Asolo in the Veneto.

Grant gives this deeply picturesque view distinction by the imaginative use of stone pillars to frame the composition. Through his pallet, Grant captures the warmth of the landscape, which reverberates through the terracotta rooftops. In her biography of Duncan Grant, Frances Spaulding notes Eardley Knolly’s intriguing observation that ‘Duncan was prepared to put up his easel anywhere, almost without thought as to the choice of motif.’ [1] He was impassioned by the charm of the Italian countryside, which is manifest in this idyllic landscape.

[1] Knolly, E. quoted in Spaulding, F. (1997) Duncan Grant: A Biography. London: Chatto & Windus Limited, p. 407.