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Dora Carrington (1893-1932) NUDE WITH BIRD Oil on canvas, painted circa 1923 25.5 x 30.5cm Provenance: Charlotte Strachey, her husband Anthony Blond gifted it to the present owner. The nude probably portrays Henrietta Bingham, daughter of the American Ambassador to the Court of St James, with whom Carrington was besotted in the mid 1920s. Extract from Gerald Brennan 'A Personal Record', p 75 'Henrietta was the daughter of Judge Bingham, a Kentucky millionaire who was said to have murdered his wife, and who some years later was appointed ambassador in London by President Roosevelt. Carrington was fascinated by Henrietta with her pure oval face, long-lashed blue eyes and low husky Southern voice, and some time that summer they had an affair. It was the only lesbian affair of her life and it did not last long since Henrietta changed her lovers often. I did not feel jealous and not only offered them my room for their meetings, but said that I would give up my claim to seeing Carrington when she came up to town if that meant that she could spend her time with her friend. What I did not then know was that Carrington was basically a lesbian too and that her affair with Henrietta would affect her physical relations with me by giving her a feeling of guilt which made her react against me afterwards. I was to pay dearly for her having met this American girl. Dora de Houghton Carrington was an English painter, designer and decorative artist whose life and relationships were complex. She had affairs with both men and women, but is best known for her deep attachment to the homosexual writer Lytton Strachey. Carrington painted only for her own pleasure, did not sign her works and rarely exhibited them, hence she was not well known as a painter during her lifetime. She lacked confidence in her own work and undervalued it. She was a perfectionist whose work never met her expectations. Perhaps her most famous work is the iconic 'Portrait of Lytton Strachey', painted in 1916. Even though she was a founding member of the Omega Workshop with Roger Fry, her decorative art also remained unknown to the public until the late 1960s. Although not a member of the Bloomsbury Group, she is closely associated with them through her affair with Lytton Strachey, her occasional lesbian affairs and her 'Bohemian' attitudes. She married Ralph Partridge in 1921, but spent most of her life with Strachey, the three living together for many years in a menage a trois. There were no exhibitions of Carrington's work during her lifetime. The first was held at the Upper Grosvenor Galleries in London in 1970. A second exhibition was held at the Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford in 1978. Curated by Noel, Carrington's brother, it was more comprehensive in coverage and included Carrington's paintings, drawings and decorative works. More recently, in 1995, there was a retrospective exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery in London. Despite the posthumous recognition that she has gained, she remains the most neglected serious painter of her generation.