+ Expand

Description: oil on canvas

+ Expand

Dimensions: 81 by 61cm.; 32 by 24in.

+ Expand

Notes: PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE PHILADELPHIA COLLECTION
Painted circa 1918-19, the unidentified sitter appears to be identical to the model who appears in two works by Duncan Grant, Portrait of a Negro (Coll. Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery) and West Indian ? Fitzroy Street (Private Collection, formerly Jonathan Clark & Co). The first, a pastel, shows the same sitter in a half length format with head resting on his left hand. The second, an oil, which was possibly unfinished, shows the sitter in exactly the same pose, and with the same background, leading one to believe that both that and the present work were executed concurrently, something that is not unusual amongst the Bloomsbury artists.

West Indian sitters are rare in British art at this period, and as we have a reference to Grant painting a black sitter in a letter from Clive Bell to Mary Hutchinson, dated 3υrd October 1918, it may be that this also helps to date the present painting.