Duncan Grant

Fanny Garnett (Duncan and Vanessa’s grand-daughter, twin of Nerissa)

Deborah Gage Fine Art, London, where acquired by the family of the present owner, and thence by descent

In January and February 1914 Duncan Grant paid an extended visit to Tunisia. After a time spent in the capital, he went to the city of Tozeur in the south-west of the country, bordering the Sahara. He found a village pottery on the outskirts and worked there, sending back native pots for sale at the Omega Workshops, as well as at least two vases he had decorated with figures in black outline (both are now in Grant’s studio at Charleston).

The present painting shows a grove of palm trees, one of many in the district in Tozeur known as the Palmeraie. Its dates were famous and formed a chief export business of the city. Grant also sent to London a box of oranges and lemons for Vanessa Bell which she and Roger Fry both painted.

Dating from 1914, the present work demonstrates the pivotal moment that Grant decided to break from traditional English painting and embrace the European avant-garde. His time spent in North Africa and the South of France were crucial in following the steps of artists such as Matisse and Derain, the former he met in 1911 at his studio at Issy-Les-Moulineaux on the outskirts of Paris. Grant visited Matisse several times prior to his Tunisian visits. The trip ro Tunis had also inspired Grant to paint designs on local ceramics, which would later inspire the Omega Workshop, run by the Bloomsbury artists.

Grant had been exposed to the Post-Impressionists and Fauvists through Roger Fry's exhibition in London in 1910 and 1912, which had been initially met with great controversy. Grant, as a trailblazing artist of his time, was one of the few British artists to embrace the European sensibility. The Landscape in Tunis celebrates this rare period of work which left a great impression on Grant, and in the present work, he employs stylised sun-soaked colour palm leaves and gestural pencil lines, which create a wonderful sense of Mediterranean rhythm.

The importance of this work is shown by the fact that it was kept and treasured within the family collection for many years. This special group of Bloomsbury works was formerly in the collection of Frances ‘Fanny’ Garnett, who is the daughter of Angelica Bell and David Garnett, and granddaughter to Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. The group encompasses paintings by both Grant and Bell, who were the central figures of the Bloomsbury group working in the early twentieth century. As the second generation of Bloomsbury, Fanny grew up surrounded by painting, writing and artistic experimentation, and these personal works include familiar, family scenes to the Garnett family, including a portrait of Vanessa Bell with Julian Bell (Angelica’s half brother) and a portrait of Nerissa Garnett (Franny’s twin).

 We would like to thank Richard Shone for his contribution to this catalogue note.