Vanessa Bell is one of the most significant women artists of the twentieth century. Iceland Poppies is an iconic painting, marking a transition in her career from Victorian conventions to Modernity. Painted in 1908 or 1909 it establishes the qualities of restrained monumentality and distilled calm that were to distinguish her most ambitious work.
Bell’s style became more radical and experimental from 1912 with the influence of Post-Impressionism.
Bell’s biographer has suggested that the groups of three within the painting – the two white poppies in the foreground slightly distanced from the third, red flower; the three vessels and the three bands in the background – may reflect a preoccupation with triangular relationships: Vanessa Bell’s close relationship with her sister, Virginia Stephen, was disturbed by her marriage to Clive Bell and this relationship was then affected by the arrival of their first child, Julian. Clive Bell’s subsequent flirtation with Virginia coincided with the painting of Iceland Poppies.

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