Vanessa Bell became close friends with the art critic Roger Fry in 1910 and began an affair with him the following year.

This portrait was painted when the lovers spent a short holiday together at Niton, Isle of Wight in 1912. Vanessa was experimenting with a pseudo-pointilliste technique previously used by Duncan Grant which she had named his 'leopard manner'.

Provenance

The Fry family; Anthony d'Offay Gallery, 1984; Mr & Mrs Charles Alcorn, Texas to 1997; Mr Bret Thompson.


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