YCBA Collections Search

In 1910, the influential art critic Roger Fry organized the first British exhibition of postimpressionist art at the Grafton Galleries in London. The same year, Fry designed and built his new house, Durbins, in which he aimed for the same abstraction to essentials in architecture that he saw as characteristic of the new way of painting. The main rooms of the house looked south across the garden to the Surrey countryside beyond. Fellow Bloomsbury artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant mentioned sketching landscapes from these rooms. The garden was organized into orderly spaces divided by flower borders and hedges, softening the transition from indoor to outdoor space. The standing figure may be Fry’s sister Margery, who lived with him at Durbins during the First World War.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016