The Blue Sheep
Screen
1915 (painting (image-making))
1915 (painting (image-making))
Artist/Maker | |
Place of origin |
Duncan Grant, like Vanessa Bell, was a painter who collaborated with Roger Fry to make objects for the home under the banner of the Omega Workshops between 1913 and 1919. They were all influenced by advanced French post-impressionist painting. The Omega Workshops produced ceramics, printed and woven textiles, and painted furniture, but the medium of the folding screen was perhaps best suited to the skills of the artist-designers. The painters treated screens as if they were artists' canvases rather than utilitarian furniture. This screen, for example, depicts a flock of about twenty sheep penned together, bizarrely but expressively rendered in bright blues against an ochre background (Fry admired Grant's 'exquisite use of colour'). Grant has paid no heed to the hinged breaks between the three folding panels - breaks which by necessity must be always visible in order for the screen to stand up - and the joins slice through many of the sheep. Only the suggestion of a wicker pen approximately fits the canvas.
Object details
Categories | |
Object type | |
Title | The Blue Sheep (assigned by artist) |
Materials and techniques | Distemper or Gouache on paper stretched over a wooden frame |
Brief description | Folding screen, 'The Blue Sheep', painted by Duncan Grant for the Omega Workshops, Britain, 1915 |
Physical description | Folding screen, 'The Blue Sheep', painted pine. Gouache or distemper (previously identified as one or the other) on paper mounted on canvas over a wooden frame Painting depicts blue stylised sheep on an orange/red ground. |
Dimensions |
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Production type | Unique |
Object history | Purchased from Paul Roche, 1966. Roche, a poet, cared for Grant in his final years and Grant died at Roche's home in 1978. This screen was exhibited at 'Art Made Modern: Roger Fry's Vision of Art' from 15th January 1999 to 23rd January 2000 at the Courtauld Institute of Art. |
Subject depicted | |
Summary | Duncan Grant, like Vanessa Bell, was a painter who collaborated with Roger Fry to make objects for the home under the banner of the Omega Workshops between 1913 and 1919. They were all influenced by advanced French post-impressionist painting. The Omega Workshops produced ceramics, printed and woven textiles, and painted furniture, but the medium of the folding screen was perhaps best suited to the skills of the artist-designers. The painters treated screens as if they were artists' canvases rather than utilitarian furniture. This screen, for example, depicts a flock of about twenty sheep penned together, bizarrely but expressively rendered in bright blues against an ochre background (Fry admired Grant's 'exquisite use of colour'). Grant has paid no heed to the hinged breaks between the three folding panels - breaks which by necessity must be always visible in order for the screen to stand up - and the joins slice through many of the sheep. Only the suggestion of a wicker pen approximately fits the canvas. |
Bibliographic reference | Green, Christopher (ed.), Art made Modern: Roger Fry's Vision of Art, London : Courtauld Institute of Art, 1999
p.123, no. 146 |
Collection | |
Accession number | CIRC.806-1966 |
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Record created | September 25, 2000 |
Record URL |
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