| Dora Carrington |
 |
| Dora Carrington and Lytton Strachey |
| Birth name |
Dora de Houghton Carrington |
| Born |
29 March 1893(1893-03-29) |
| Died |
11 March 1932 (aged 38) |
| Training |
Slade School of Art |
Dora de Houghton Carrington (29 March 1893 – 11 March, 1932), known generally as Carrington, was a British painter and decorative artist, remembered in part for her association with members of the Bloomsbury Group, especially the writer Lytton Strachey.
Early life
Born in Hereford, England, she attended the all-girls' Bedford High School which emphasized art. Her parents also paid for her to attend extra lessons in drawing. She went to the Slade School of Art in London where she subsequently won a scholarship; there her fellow students included Paul Nash, Christopher R.W. Nevinson and Mark Gertler. All at one time or another were in love with her. Gertler in particular pursued Carrington for a number of years, and they had a brief sexual relationship during the years of the First World War.
From her time at the Slade onwards she was commonly known simply by her surname. She was not well known as a painter during her lifetime, as she rarely exhibited and also did not sign her work. She worked for a while at the Omega Workshop, and for the Hogarth Press, designing woodcuts.
Career and personal life
Carrington was not a member of the Bloomsbury Group, though she was closely associated with Bloomsbury and, more generally, with "Bohemian" attitudes, through her longtime relationship with the homosexual writer Lytton Strachey, whom she first met in 1916. Distinguished by her cropped pageboy hair style (before it was fashionable) and somewhat androgynous appearance, she was troubled by her sexuality; she is known to have at least one lesbian affair with Henrietta Bingham. She also had a significant relationship with the writer Gerald Brenan.
In June 1918 Virginia Woolf wrote of Carrington in her diary: ‘She is odd from her mixture of impulse & self consciousness. I wonder sometimes what she’s at: so eager to please, conciliatory, restless, & active. ... but she is such a bustling eager creature, so red & solid, & at the same time inquisitive, that one can’t help liking her.[1] Carrington first set up house with Lytton Strachey in November 1917, when they moved together to Tidmarsh Mill House, near Pangbourne, Berkshire; she continued to live with him at Ham Spray House from 1924 although the home had been purchased by Lytton in the name of her husband, Ralph Partridge, who lived there also on weekends with his lover (and future wife) Frances Marshall.[2]
Strachey died of cancer at Ham Spray in January 1932. Carrington, who saw no purpose in a life without Strachey, shot herself two months later, and died soon afterwards.[3] Carrington's life with Strachey was dramatized in the 1995 film Carrington, starring Emma Thompson in the title role.
An accomplished painter of both portraits and landscape, she also worked in applied and decorative arts, painting on any type of surface she had at hand including inn signs, tiles and furniture. She also decorated pottery. Carrington designed the library at Ham Spray.
In 1970 David Garnett published a selection of letters and extracts from her diary, since which time critical and popular appreciation of her work has risen sharply.[4] In 1978, Sir John Rothenstein, for nearly 30 years Director of the Tate Gallery, London, called Dora Carrington “the most neglected serious painter of her time”. [5] "That is no longer the case. In 1995, she was the subject of a major retrospective exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery in London." [6] Two of her works are in the Tate Gallery London. [7]
Carrington's relationship with Lytton Strachey
For many years, Carrington’s art was neglected by the public and her main notoriety was due to her relationship to Lytton Strachey. On his deathbed, Strachey said, “I always wanted to marry Carrington but never did.” His biographer calls this sentiment “untrue”, and argues that Strachey was simply trying to ‘console’ Carrington.[8] However, the facts suggest otherwise.
It is obvious through their constant correspondence and 16 years of Strachey choosing to live with Carrington that they both cherished a love for each other although Carrington’s was always the strongest and most consuming. Upon his death, Lytton Strachey left Carrington 10,000 British pounds (the equivalent of 240,000 British pounds in 1994 money).[9]
See also
Bibliography
- Gerzina, Gretchen Holbrook (1989). Carrington: A Life. New York, W.W. Norton & Co..
- Haycock, David Boyd (2009). A Crisis of Brilliance: Five Young British Artists and the Great War. London, Old Street Publishing. ISBN 978-1-905847-84-6.
- Hill, Jane (1994). The Art of Dora Carrington. London, The Herbert Press Ltd.
References
- ^ Ann Olivier Bell (ed.) (1977), The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Vol. I: 1915—1919 (London: The Hogarth Press), page 153.
- ^ "Carrington--A Life" by Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, 1989, p. 299.
- ^ Haycock, A Crisis of Brilliance, p. 313
- ^ "Carrington--A Life" by Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, 1989, Introduction p. xv.
- ^ Noel Carrington, Carrington Paintings, Drawings, and Decorations [1978], p. 14
- ^ [1]
- ^ [2]
- ^ "Lytton Strachey--The New Biography" by Michael Holroyd, 1994, p.678
- ^ "Lytton Strachey--The New Biography" by Michael Holroyd, 1994, pp.686, 531.
External links
