The Camera

Art: Dora Carrington by Emily Lawson-Todd

Three men cast long shadows over Dora Carrington: Beyond Bloomsbury, the first exhibition of the artist’s works in nearly thirty years. In some ways, this exhibition is inevitable. The largely forgotten Carrington (1893-1932) – she chose to use the mononym, a choice the gallery oddly undoes in its exhibition title – was a frequent presence on the edges of the Bloomsbury Group in the interwar years with its cast of ‘main characters’: Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Roger Fry, Lytton Strachey, amongst them. Carrington, by turns timid, inquisitive, eager to please, and impulsive, energetic, and free-spirited, was inexorably drawn to these colourful bohemians, but her life and work was, and remains, often obscured by the larger characters amongst the group. She found herself pulled between, and emotionally manipulated at times, by Lytton Strachey and Ralph Partridge, whilst Mark Gertler, himself on the edge of Bloomsbury owing to his patronage from Lady Ottoline Morrel, was her first serious partner and a source of frequent anxiety to Carrington.

Indeed, the first work the viewer comes across compounds the sense that Carrington was always in the shadow of these ‘great male artists.’ Besides the exhibition title panel and acknowledgements, Carrington’s face appears sporting her signature bobbed hair with a slight smile gracing her lips, staring off into the middle distance. It is a reproduction of Gertler’s 1912 portrait of her. Gertler, whose pushy and often whiny attempts to get Carrington to sleep with him were a source of real anxiety and a burden upon her as the young artist sought to understand herself and her sexuality, thus becomes our first point of introduction to Carrington.

Dora Carrington by Dora Carrington in 1910, courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery

Gertler’s work of a passive Carrington, sat in a typical pose for a model, is a great contrast to one of the first works we see in the gallery – Carrington’s self-portrait from 1913. Here she is half twisted around, one hand on the door frame in the background, wearing oversized navy-blue trousers with a cap atop her head, gaze fixed on something to the viewers left. It is a playful and bold presentation of herself as she reached the end of her time at the Slade art school where she studied between 1910-1914. It was this period in which, as Carrington’s biographer Gretchen Gerzina has asserted, Carrington was ‘in a sense reborn.’ It was here that she lopped off her hair, becoming the centre of a group of other young women at the Slade who became known (mockingly at first) as the ‘cropheads,’ shedding the first traces of her expected femininity through her jettisoning of her long hair and first name, and where her art became more confident and increasingly inspired by new art being produced in Britain and on the continent – works by Walter Sickert, Augustus John, and Paul Cezanne amongst others set Carrington’s (and many others) minds alight.

As art historians and scholars such as Frances Borzello and Jenifer Higgie have asserted, women’s self-portraiture has been a way for women to express who they are in playful and creative ways, claiming back their agency from men for whom women are often no more than mere passive models, conduits for male ‘genius,’ in a field (or fields: both art in general, and within it, the sub-field of self-portraiture) long dominated by men. That Gertler’s portrait is our point of introduction to Carrington is, perhaps paradoxically, both disappointing and yet entirely apt. Here is Carrington through the male gaze – feminine, passive, and docile; model and love – an image that is totally at odds with the reality of Carrington’s life.

Photo taken of Dora Carrington by Lady Ottoline Morell in 1917, courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery

Upon entering the gallery, the viewer is greeted with a collection of photographs and images of Carrington (including her self-portrait). These include the now famous image of her taken by Ottoline Morrell, the photographer looking up at Carrington, nude and astride one of the statues in Lady Ottoline’s garden at Garsington Manor, just outside Oxford. But there are a host of other images that give us a closer look at Carrington. If Lady Ottoline’s photograph presents us with Carrington the free spirit (she described Carrington as ‘attractive as a wild shaggy Exmoor pony is attractive’ – adventurous and untamed), many of the others point to another aspect of Carrington. Here she is sat beside Lytton Strachey by a window outside (he eagerly explaining something to her), there she sits amidst friends including Strachey and Ralph Partridge at Ham Spray where the three shared a house. In a short three minute or so clip later in the exhibition Carrington emerges from the doors of Ham Spray into the garden ringing a bell in an excessive and playful manner. The menfolk soon scuttle back inside for their lunch. Here then, is the domesticated Carrington, taking care of the men. This was a role she clearly enjoyed, but it was also a source of destabilising stress to her at times and prevented her from working and creating.

It is impossible to put on an exhibition of Carrington’s life and works without addressing the complex, multifaceted relationship between Carrington and Strachey. The symbiotic link between them saw the two cohabit for nearly a decade and a half – mostly at Ham Spray House in Wiltshire, despite the fact that Strachey was gay, and Carrington entangled with various men and women through that time, including a marriage to Ralph Partridge (with whom Lytton also became obsessed). Carrington became Strachey’s carer and most ardent supporter, whilst he became her teacher, supporter, and confidante. Her suicide, two months after Strachey’s death was both tragic and expected – he had consumed so much of her life. Indeed, her 1916 portrait of a reclining Strachey, long, lanky fingers clutching the book he is engrossed in, is perhaps the seminal image of Lytton Strachey. It is displayed here amongst other portraits in the final space of the exhibition which considers her interaction with the Bloomsbury group, including paintings of a young David Garnett, as well as a weary looking E.M. Forster slumped in his chair. Strachey’s portrait is wonderfully detailed and realistic, whilst Garnett and Forster’s portraits demonstrate the influence of the impressionists in the way Carrington achieves the varying shades of their faces and suits through her brushstrokes. As well as her portrait of him, a bust of Strachey from 1929, the work of Stephen Tomlin (with whom Carrington had an affair), looks out from the right at visitors entering the exhibition, greeting them before they are even introduced to Carrington’s work. This is presumably meant to be the last piece viewers examine before they leave the space, but owing to the exhibition’s circular shape, it is also the first thing the exhibition goer sees. As with Gertler’s portrait, there is something fitting about this, and one wonders if the effect is accidental or intentional.

Despite the sub-title ‘Beyond Bloomsbury,’ the exhibition cannot escape from one of the group’s founding figures. In the book published to accompany the exhibition, the index reference for Lytton Strachey reads ‘passim’ – a telling and poignant statement. Carrington and Strachey’s lives were so wrapped up with each other that it seems impossible – and wrong in some ways – to separate their tales. Any biography of Carrington is also one of Strachey and vice versa.

Farm at Watendlath by Dora Carrington, Creative Commons licensed

With the Bloomsburyite Partridge thrown into the mix as well, the triangle that did indeed define much of Carrington’s adult years is complete. Both of the men could be affectionate, kind, and generous towards her, but there were also tensions and the needs of the two men were often expected to override her own personal and artistic needs. Carrington frequently acted as nurse and carer to Strachey during his bouts of illness, and the role of smoothing out relations within the triangle when issues arose, especially from outside, often fell to her. When Partridge began an affair with the pretty, young Frances Marshall, it looked like life at Ham Spray may fall apart. Carrington spent much time finding the suitable arrangement that would allow life in the house to continue as close to normal as possible, channeling her energies towards resolving domestic issues at the expense of time working creatively. For several months in 1926 amid this crisis she painted nothing.

Pallant House’s Director, Simon Martin, has argued that in using the subtitle ‘Beyond Bloomsbury,’ the exhibition is engaging in an attempt to lift Carrington from the perception of her as a ‘bit-part character’ role in the story of the Bloomsbury group, and reposition her ‘in a wider sphere of artists, writers and historical figures and look beyond the undoubtedly significant relationships that have often defined her.’ Certainly, the exhibition makes a case for her art as more interesting and significant than has previously been recognised, and examines aspects of her life as a fascinating, progressive, non-conforming figure. As Rebecca Birrell wrote in her beautiful and moving group portrait of several queer twentieth century artists, Carrington was ‘unwilling to compromise,’ daring to ‘live in opposition to social norms.’

And yet: ‘Strachey, Lytton passim.’ She was certainly no ‘bit-part character,’ but Carrington was often overshadowed and dominated in many ways by the men of the Bloomsbury group around her – even if this was not Strachey or Partridge’s intention. As Linda Nochlin’s groundbreaking work of feminist art history, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? made clear back in the 1970s, ‘art is not a free, autonomous activity of a super-endowed individual,’ but instead ‘the total situation of art making, both in terms of the development of the art maker and in the nature and quality of the work of art itself, occur in a social situation, are integral elements of this social structure.’ Nochlin was referring to the institutional barriers inherent to the system which had impeded women’s access to the art world, as created by a patriarchal society. This society also expected Carrington, the great non-conformer, to fit into the box of ‘woman’: carer, minder, homemaker, and fixer. Is it possible to write Carrington’s story without reckoning with the selfish demands of the Bloomsbury men? Can she escape the clutches of the relationships that shaped her life, and controlled its flow?

Pallant House’s exhibition doesn’t manage to answer these questions or to lift Carrington out of this predicament. Whilst the exhibition’s accompanying book seeks to tackle some of these issues, the exhibition itself does not manage to disrupt the narrative that places within ‘the undoubtedly significant relationships that have often defined her’, as Simon Martin had hoped. Lytton Strachey, Ralph Partridge, and Mark Gertler haunt this exhibition at times, a constant presence that, try as the exhibition might in its framing, cannot be escaped. In two of the five spaces that make up the exhibition, Gertler’s works are displayed alongside Carrington’s. Yes, he and his work had an influence on her early work, but so did many other artists. And yet it is Getler whose canvases adorn the wall alongside hers. Having taken up so much of her time and her mental energies in life, here he takes up space in her exhibition.

Lytton Strachey by Dora Carrington in 1916, courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery

Whilst the presentation of the exhibition may then fail to live up to its noble framing, the works themselves are without doubt wonderful. Pallant House does an excellent job of bringing so much of Carrington’s work together in a single space, demonstrating her skill at working in several different mediums and styles. Her earlier work from the Slade, including her nudes which brought her several prizes at the school, are presented alongside portraits and landscapes from the mid-late 1910s and 1920s which cross between styles and schools of art, as well as more domestic art: painted tiles, works made of foil on glass, woodprints (she produced illustrations for the Woolfs’ first book at the Hogarth Press), as well as her charming and often hilarious sketches often doodled on her frequent letters to Strachey.

The absence of her 1918 painting The Mill at Tidmarsh is a great shame. Whilst it is reproduced on a large board, the original is in a private collection. Tidmarsh was the first place Carrington and Strachey lived together, before Ham Spray. It was an important part of her development both as a person and as an artist, giving her, as it did, the space and freedom to paint. Its absence is a reminder of the fact that so much art, bound up with important parts of our national history and the stories we tell about our nations cultures, is in private hands, enjoyment of it for the privileged few.

One aspect that the exhibition does an excellent job of presenting is Carrington’s travels. Like all artists, she used her trips around the country and in Europe to explore new landscapes and create works inspired by them. Even the most seasoned lover of Carrington’s art will find works here they are less familiar and an opportunity to explore them up close. As well as her monumental 1924 Spanish Landscape with Mountains, which seems almost like a surrealist painting with its undulating landscape, other works from Carrington’s trips to France and Spain are here too. These trips were often upended by Strachey’s illnesses which often meant he couldn’t travel or had to return early, at which point Carrington would become quite agitated and worried about him. Even with her landscapes then, that shadow seems to loom.

Dora Carrington: Beyond Bloomsbury offers a noble attempt to lift Carrington above her peripheral status within the Bloomsbury group and untangle her life from her relationships with the revered figures around her. On the first score, the exhibition is a success – the works are remarkable, and the viewer gets a sense of Carrington’s artistic development and skill across multiple art forms as well as her adeptness with crafts such as tile painting and working with foil on glass. The exhibition makes a strong case for Carrington as a major artistic presence despite the neglect of her works after her death in March 1932.

On the second score, there are many more issues. In many ways trying to unpack Carrington’s relationships with and beyond Bloomsbury seems almost impossible given how her life, art, and ability to produce work was so tied up in her life with Lytton Strachey and Ralph Partridge, especially. Pallant House aims to let her work tell her own story – a commendable and brave approach – but it soon becomes apparent that the exhibition has been unable to fully do this. This is little surprise given how Carrington is knotted deep into the web which makes up the network of connections between members of the Bloomsbury group and to the whims and demands of the men around her. Rather than try and lift her above this, perhaps it is time we approached Carrington’s life and art by directly confronting how patriarchy, embedded even amongst the queer lives of the Bloomsbury group and its satellite members, at times entrapped and ensnared this remarkable, wild, nonconformist.

By James A.S. Sunderland