Nancy Mitford

Original canvas. The canvas appears sound. The canvas is loose and would benefit from re-stretching. There are pinholes visible in the corners, with some scattered traces of very minor loss. There is surface dirt and traces of studio detritus visible, but this excepting the work appears to be in very good overall condition. Ultraviolet light reveals areas of fluorescence which appear in keeping with the artist's materials, and do not suggest retouching. Housed in a gilt wooden frame.
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Nancy Mitford attended the Slade School of Art in London from 1926-27 where she was taught by Professor Henry Tonks.  Acknowledged as the most renowned and formidable teacher of his generation, Tonks quite bluntly told Mitford that she would not be an artist and should find something else to do. Typically unperturbed by this judgement, Nancy instead set about becoming a writer. It is believed that this painting was done during Mitford's short time at the Slade.

This painting is most probably a recollection by Nancy Mitford of a scene from her childhood painted years later. It portrays the view through the top floor leaded glass window of the nursery the sisters shared at Asthall Manor in Oxfordshire. The Duchess writes ‘Our nursery windows overlooked the churchyard with its graves of wool merchants longs since dead, the beautiful tombs topped with fleeces carved in stone. We were fascinated by funerals which we were not meant to watch but of course we did. Decca and I once fell into a newly dug grave, to the delight of Nancy who pronounced fearful bad luck on us forever’. Deborah Devonshire, Wait for Me, London, 2010, p. 4.

Asthall Manor had a pronounced impact on the Mitford Sisters. After the sale of Batsford in Gloucestershire, the family moved to this pretty Jacobean manor in 1919. The Duchess's earliest memories were from Asthall. Nancy Mitford loosely based Alconleigh in The Pursuit of Love (1945) on Asthall and Jessica (Decca) Mitford describes life there in great detail in Hons and Rebels (1960).