Footnotes

• PROVENANCE:
  Sale; Sotheby's, London, October 1995, lot 90, where purchased by the present owner
  
  EXHIBITED:
  Edinburgh, The Scottish Arts Council, Modern Art From Scottish Houses, where lent by P.H. Davis
  
  The model in the present lot is Paul Roche, the poet, novelist and translator. He met Duncan Grant in the summer of 1946, while crossing the road at Piccadilly, a brief exchange turned into an evening spent drinking rum and looking at pictures. From then on Roche became a favourite model of Grant's, putting his relationship with Vanessa Bell under increasing strain. The present lot is posed in Grant's studio in 1947 at 1 Taviton Street, Bloomsbury. The three-fold screen, designed by Grant and worked in cross-stitch by his mother Ethel Grant in the 1920s, provides the background (the screen is now in Portsmouth City Art Gallery).
  
  We are grateful to Richard Shone for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.

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Category: Fine Art / Modern British and Irish Art

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