Henry Lamb

(British, 1883-1960)

Portrait of Lytton Strachey 38.5 x 28.2 cm. (15 1/8 x 11 1/8 in.)

Footnotes

Provenance
George Kennedy, Donegal, Ireland
Thence by family descent to the present owner
Private Collection, Ireland

Giles Lytton Strachey (1880-1932) was a critic, biographer and an important member of the Bloomsbury Group. He first sat for Lamb in 1908, with the artist suitably impressed to comment 'I should very much like to make a more adequate presentation of you than that sketch... your posing is exemplary' (Henry Lamb, quoted in Henry Lamb exh.cat., Manchester City Art Gallery, 1984, p.38). So it was that in the ensuing years, the artist worked and reworked a number of drawings and studies for the finished masterpiece of 1914 which now hangs in the collection of the Tate, London, completed long before Strachey gained fame for publications such as Eminent Victorians (1918).

The pair had been on a disastrous holiday together to Scotland and Ireland in 1912 where Lamb sulked constantly owing to the terrible weather and lodging conditions whilst Strachey did a poor job of pretending not to be in love with Lamb, resulting in frayed tensions and an unexpected departure by the author. Lamb had become quickly irritated by a fellow guest (who happened to be Jack B. Yeats) and his 'interruptions'; the snoring of another guest (the former parish priest) and the fact he was forced to share a room with Lytton, who continually questioned the nature of their relationship. They quickly recovered their bond however with Lytton writing to Henry shortly after leaving asking 'I wonder how your coast has been... It's all fixated in my mind's eye with the most vivid accuracy. I should like so much to come back again. Do you think we could manage that?' (Paul Levy Ed., The Letters of Lytton Strachey, Penguin Books Ltd., London, 2005, pp.208-209). The two did go on to make another trip to Ireland much later in 1930 with Lytton entertained by the fact that he was 'with Henry after all these years, and in Ireland too, where such a fearful crisis was once enacted between us' (Op.Cit., p.627).

Irish architect George Kennedy (see provenance) had initially studied painting at The Slade before enrolling in the Académie Julian in Paris in 1906, where he almost certainly met Henry Lamb, if he had not already done so in London. The two men became firm lifelong friends and 'Kennedy', as he was simply known, even wrote the first critical monograph of Lamb's work in 1924. Lamb meanwhile described his pal affectionately as 'There is a certain divine strain in that profoundly unkempt creature, but it may take one lengthy probings to strike it' (Keith Clements, Henry Lamb, The Artist and his Friends, Redcliffe Press Ltd., Bristol, 1985, p.108). So it was that in 1912, and encouraged by Kennedy, Lamb had made that first visit to Ireland. Following the aforementioned, calamitous hotel stay he relocated to the home of his architect friend, Cashelnagor, at Gortahork near the coast of Co. Donegal where he would spend the rest of the winter (and return twice the following year). It was from here that he journeyed to his beloved Gola Island, some 10 miles away, to paint and of which he declared 'I find myself in paradise' (Op.Cit., p.116).

Please note that there is an architectural sketch verso in the hand of George Kennedy.

We are grateful to Richard Shone for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.