THE BLOOMSBURY GROUP
Our last AFTER DARK auction, included an unidentified pastel drawing by a member of the famed Bloomsbury Group. Vallot’s cataloger Barry Oliver discusses the mystery behind the drawing, drawing on the groups’ history as an early 20th century group of progressive artists’ circle whose members included notable queer men and women.
Lot 9 in our May 23, 2025 auction AFTER DARK/SPRING
Inscribed, “A Duncan Grant Christmas 1927, Rupert Doone at the New Year”, the pastel drawing of a nude figure belongs stylistically and thematically to the milieu of the Bloomsbury Group, and in particular to the circle surrounding Duncan Grant.
A closer look at the inscription.
The Bloomsbury Group refers to the loose-knit association of British modernist intellectuals, writers, artists and philosophers who were active during the first half of the 20th century. The group is named after the Bloomsbury district, near central London, which was the hub for their intellectual and social lives. Core members included Clive Bell, Vanessa Bell, E. M. Forster, Roger Fry, John Maynard Keynes, Desmond MacCarthy, Lytton Strachey, Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf. The tenth Bloomsbury figure, Duncan Grant (1885 – 1978) was a Scottish post-impressionist painter and designer of textiles, pottery, theatre sets and costumes.
A few members of the group including Duncan Grant (standing on the right). Image source: Wikipedia
Though previously catalogued by another auction house as the work of Duncan Grant himself, stylistic and signature analysis of the drawing suggests a broader attribution. While lacking definitive authorship, there remains several tantalizing clues in Grant’s biography that might lead one to future attribution to himself or another Bloomsbury Group artist and, in particular, those who visited Charleston House in the late 1920s. Charleston functioned as both residence and studio for the painters Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell who were long-term creative companions and romantic partners.
Charleston House. Image source: Wikipedia
Although fathering a child with Bell, Grant took many male lovers such as the economist John Maynard Keynes and the historian Lytton Strachey from the Bloomsbury set. Set in rural Essex, Charleston House became a popular place of gathering for the members of the Bloomsbury Group especially at Christmastime. At first, Charleston House would seem quite an inhospitable place to entertain during the winter months. Hot water and radiators weren't installed until 1926. Electricity did not arrive until a decade later.
“In spite of such conditions,” Richard Shone has written, “visitors swelled the household, bringing welcome news and gossip from London, toys and chocolate for the children”
In the year when the drawing is dated, 1927, Duncan Grant spent Christmas at Charleston and thereafter left for London shortly before his planned trip to Cassis in France where he would join his mother in the first week of January. In the months between October and Christmas 1927, Duncan Grant visited Paris to meet Robert Medley (1905 – 1994) an English artist and theatre designer. While in the French capital, they collaborated on “little water-colour sketches in the Louvre" as recalled by Medley himself.
Medley was joined by his lover Rupert Doone (1903 – 1966), a Ballets Russes dancer and choreographer, with whom he co-founded the Group Theatre. The inscription of the drawing explicitly references Doone who may well be the subject. The name was previously incorrectly identified by another auction house as one "Repent Done". On the relationship between Doone and Grant, Frances Spalding writes, "Doone had hoped that Duncan would collaborate with him on theatrical projects, but though Duncan designed some costumes... and entered into long discussions with Doone for a ballet... nothing further came of this relationship". Richard Shone further notes that Medley "was generally better liked than Rupert Doone who could be overbearing and exigent".
Grant’s later biographer, Spalding however hints at a romantic link between the two claiming that Doone was one of his "former pick-ups".
If the figure in the drawing is in fact Doone himself, to whom can we ascribe authorship? Medley was Doone's life partner, so one could hypothesize that he may be the artist of such an intimate nude sketch of Doone. In 2020, however, a series of secret sketches made by Duncan Grant of his male lovers were rediscovered.
Alternatively, one could claim that Grant was artist behind the drawing: Grant’s relationship with Doone began predates the dancer’s first meeting with Medley in 1926. Doone had posed nude for Grant previously in several drawings and portrait heads during the early 1920s. Grant often found it difficult to find male models comfortable enough to be nude together when painting The Bathers which he began in 1927, the same year as the drawing is dated. Medley and Doone's intimate relationship, as the former recalled in his 1983 memoir, made them suitable sitters.
Since Grant had only met Doone in Paris a few months before, it is probably likely that Doone was not present for the 1927 Christmas party at Charleston. In a letter from Vanessa Bell dated New Year's Eve of the same year, she speaks of the Bloomsbury personalities (Angelica Bell, Douglas Davidson, Louie Dunnet, Roger Fry, Peter Morris, Julia Stephen, and Virginia Woolf) who she had entertained in Grant’s absence without mentioning Doone. On the other hand, the possibility that the present work dedicated to the dancer Rupert Doone was perhaps drawn at the Christmas party hosted by Grant in 1927 cannot be completely discounted.
Written by Barry Oliver
1. Quentin Bell, Angelica Garnett, Henrietta Garnett, Richard Shone, Charleston, Past and present, rev. ed. (London: The Hogarth Press, 1993), p. 21.
2. Robert Medley, Drawn from the Life: A Memoir (London; Boston: Faber and Faber, 1983). p. 77-78.
3. Frances Spalding, Duncan Grant: A Biography (London: Pimlico, 1997), p. 237.
4. Richard Shone, Bloomsbury portraits: Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, and their circle (Oxford: Phaidon, 1976), p. 211-214.
Discover more treasures of queer art history in our forthcoming sale AFTER DARK/SUMMER to be held live later this season!