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Artist or Maker: Vanessa Bell (1879-1961)

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Description: Still life with a glass jar and an open book
signed with initials 'VB' (lower right)
oil on canvas
21 1/2 x 15 in. (54.6 x 38.1 cm.)
Painted circa 1955.

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Provenance: with Agnews, London.
Miss Ethel Sands, her sale; Christie's, London, 12 June 1970, lot 4.
Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 2 May 1991, lot 31, where purchased by the present owner.

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Notes: Ethel Sands was a pivotal figure in English cultural society, whose genius was in being the ultimate hostess. Her wide circle of friends included the coteries of Bloomsbury and Chelsea; it was at Miss Sand's that Lytton Strachey met George Moore and Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf met Arnold Bennett.

An artist herself, her homes were the epitome of good taste. In 1927 Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant designed the loggia at the Château d'Auppegard, near Offranville, outside Dieppe, the 17th Century château which Ethel Sands and her friend Nan Hudson had restored to its original condition.

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