Book Review: The Art of Dora Carrington by Jane Hill

Dora Carrington’s art reflected her life, her friends and her surroundings and Jane Hill’s book is profusely illustrated with her work. Alongside descriptions of the various stages of her complex emotional life and relationships, as well as her artistic development, are artworks and photographs that help to illuminate these incidents for the reader.

Each page of the book carries examples  of Dora's work – sketches, paintings, woodcuts, glass paintings, photographs, delightful cartoons, some strange, dark illustrations, painted furniture and even pub signs. Many of the paintings presented in The Art of Dora Carrington are full colour plates.

Dora Carrington (or ‘Carrington’ as she preferred to be known) was born in Hereford in 1893, but grew up in Bedford.

In 1910 she won a scholarship to the Slade School of Art. She immediately chopped off her long hair to create a thick bob and began to cultivate a Bohemian life-style. Amongst her friends were Augustus John, Stanley Spencer, Paul Nash, Mark Gertler and the members of the Bloomsbury Group.

Jane Hill has emphasised that whilst at the Slade, Carrington met strong, intelligent women who became her soul mates during her brief life. She was introduced to new cultural experiences including the modern art of France and books by Tolstoy and Romain Rolland.

Although not considered conventionally beautiful, Dora Carrington possessed something beyond beauty that proved irresistible to both sexes.

Ultimately however, despite a long-term relationship with the Jewish artist, Mark Gertler and various other emotional ties, including marriage, the great love of Carrington’s life was the writer, Lytton Strachey.

The bond between Lytton and Carrington was deep, despite their various affairs, and it is not known whether their life together involved anything sexual, as Strachey was a homosexual.

Lytton Strachy contracted stomach cancer and in 1932 he died. On his deathbed he said he regretted not having married Carrington.

Up to this point Carrington's life, although filled with bouts of loneliness and depression, had involved not only her art, but the creation of a home and decorating it beautifully for herself and Lytton.

Such activities had contributed to a rich interior life. Now, feeling that there was no reason to go on with her art or her life, her second attempt at suicide in 1932 was successful. She died of gunshot wounds shortly before her thirty-ninth birthday.

Carrington’s life with Lytton was ultimately tragic, yet this is not only what she should be remembered for. In this book Carrington’s work is the ultimate testament to the brief life of an extremely gifted artist.

Dora Carrington's life is also the subject of an excellent film, Carrington, starring Emma Thompson and Jonathan Price which has also raised Carrington’s profile.

 Jane Hill’s book is not only beautifully illustrated, but it is sensitively written. Hill has real empathy with her subject and has managed to allow the art of Dora Carrington to shine through and become the true measure of this extraordinary artist.

Source:

The Art of Dora Carrington by Jane Hill (The Herbert Press Ltd, 1994) ISBN:1-871569-60-5