Duncan Grant 30 Years

19 March – 2 November 2008

Duncan Grant, David Garnett in Profile, 1914, Private Collection.

2008 marks the thirtieth anniversary of Duncan Grant’s death. The Charleston Trust is honouring his achievement with a number of events and a small exhibition in the house, bringing his work into sharp focus. Seven of his most significant paintings, on loan from public and private collections, hang alongside the unique collection and interiors that he shared and decorated with Vanessa Bell at Charleston. They demonstrate the range of his influences, his experimental approach to style, and his ability to combine a rigorous pursuit of Modernism with intimate, often autobiographical subject matter.

The exhibition is supported by a talk on 6 May by Richard Morphet, who first visited Grant at Charleston in the 1960s and subsequently became Keeper of the Modern Collection at Tate; by a talk on 26 May by Grant’s daughter, Angelica Garnett; and by a Study Day at the National Portrait Gallery on 12 July when leading critics and art historians will take a broader view of Grant’s achievement in relation to Vorticism and British Modernism.

The exhibition has been most
generously supported by Sotheby’s.