Vanessa Bell (British, 1879-1961) Portrait of Henri Doucet 41.8 x...

Vanessa Bell (British, 1879-1961)
Portrait of Henri Doucet
oil on panel laid to board
41.8 x 34.5 cm. (16 1/2 x 13 5/8 in.)
Painted in 1912
Provenance
The Artist's Estate, 1970
With Anthony d'Offay, London
With Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, 17 November 1987, where acquired by the present owner
Private Collection, U.S.A

Exhibited
Lewes, Miller's Gallery, The Omega Workshops, 1946, cat.no.21
London, Arts Council of Great Britain Gallery, Vanessa Bell, 1879-1961: a Memorial Exhibition of Paintings, February-March 1964, cat.no.16; this exhibition travelled to Plymouth, City Art Gallery, April-May 1964; Bolton, Museum and Art Gallery, May 1964; Leeds, City Art Gallery, June 1964; Norwich, Castle Museum, July 1964; and Brighton, Art Gallery, August 1964
London, The Fine Art Society, Bloomsbury Portraits, 1964, cat.no.5
New York, Davis and Long Company, Vanessa Bell 1879-1961: A Retrospective Exhibition, 18 April-24 May 1980, p.16, cat.no.10 (ill.b&w)
Canterbury, The Royal Museum, Vanessa Bell: Paintings 1910-1920, April-May 1983, p.13, cat.no.15
London, Anthony d'Offay, The Omega Workshops: Alliance and Enmity in English Art 1911-1920, 18 January-6 March 1984, cat.no.3
New York, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, British Modernist Art: 1905-1930, 14 November 1987-9 January 1988, p.107, cat.no.102 (col.ill.)
London, Dulwich Picture Gallery, Vanessa Bell, 8 February-7 June 2017, p.73, unnumbered (col.ill)

Literature
Richard Shone, Bloomsbury Portraits: Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Their Circle, Phaidon, London, 1976, pl.43 (see also pl.119)
Gillian Naylor, Bloomsbury, The Artists, Authors and Designers by Themselves, Mitchell Beazley, London, 1990 p.243 (col.ill)
Richard Shone, The Art of Bloomsbury, Tate Gallery Publishing, London, 1999, p.93 (ill.b&w)

In the years immediately before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, writers and artists from abroad were to be met frequently in London's cultural life. Several of them were entertained by members of Bloomsbury - Gertrude Stein, André Gide, Jacques Copeau, Gino Severini and, of course, the stars of the Russian Ballet. The French painter Henri Auguste Doucet (1883-1915), although now somewhat forgotten, was making a name for himself in Paris and London. He had met Roger Fry in Paris in 1911 and was invited by Fry to his home near Guildford. Doucet got on well with Fry's friends Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, the latter inviting him to stay at Asheham House in the Sussex Downs in the early autumn of 1912. It was then that Bell and Grant painted Doucet's portrait (Grant's is in a private collection in France) and portrayed him in other works such as Grant's alfresco group of friends that included Doucet alongside Virginia Woolf and others. Five of Doucet's paintings were included in the Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition in London which was being organised while he was at Asheham. In the following year Doucet contributed painted decorations to the Omega Workshops. Later Fry joined him in Villeneuve-lès-Avignon in Provence for a painting holiday, where their landscapes show some mutual influence, and invited Doucet to exhibit at the Grafton Group show in London in early 1914. Later that year Doucet joined up and was killed in his first week in the trenches on 5th March 1915 in Belgium. His death greatly upset Fry who said that Doucet was someone he could talk to with ease and understanding. Doucet left a widow Camille and a small son; she was an excellent seamstress and Fry found her commissions among his English friends. A portrait of Vanessa Bell's son Julian by Doucet is in the collection at Charleston (a portrait of Bell herself by him was inventoried at Charleston but is now whereabouts unknown).

The present work has been consigned from an important private American collection, where it formerly hung alongside Duncan Grant's portrait Vanessa Bell in a Yellow Shawl (circa 1911-12), sold in these rooms November 2022 for £327,900 setting an auction record for an artist of Bloomsbury Group.

We are grateful to Richard Shone for compiling this catalogue entry.

A loan of this work has been requested for the forthcoming Vanessa Bell exhibition at MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, running from the 19 October 2024 to 23 February 2025.