Difference between revisions of "Duncan Grant"

Revision as of 13:04, 28 January 2021

Photograph of Duncan Grant and J M Keynes taken sometime prior to 1913

Duncan Grant (Duncan James Corrowr Grant, 21 January 1885 – 8 May 1978) was a British painter and designer of textiles, potterty and theatre sets and costumes. He was a member of the Bloomsbury Group.

He was a grandson of Sir John Peter Grant, 12th Laird of Rothiemurchus, and the first cousin twice removed of John Grant, Lord Huntingtower, heir of the Earls of Dysart.

Grant was born on 21 January 1885 in Rothiemurchus in northern Scotland. He studied art at the Slade School and in Italy and Paris. He was a cousin, and for some time a lover, of Lytton Strachey. Through the Stracheys, Duncan was introduced to the Bloomsbury Group, where John Maynard Keynes became another of his lovers.

From 1916 onwards Grant lived with the painter Vanessa Bell at Charleston Farmhouse in Sussex.

In 2021 Charleston held an online event as part of the Outing the Past Festival: The Erotic Drawings of Duncan Grant ^[1]

References

1. ↑ In 1959 Grant gave his friend Edward le Bas a folder marked ‘These drawings are very private.’ Inside was a collection of over four hundred erotic illustrations. It was thought that Le Bas’ sister had destroyed them after he had died. They were in fact rescued and in 2020 were generously donated to Charleston. 'The work comes from the 1940s and 50s, and expresses the playful and erotic aspects of Grant’s personality. Influenced by the Greco-Roman traditions and contemporary physique magazines, the works were produced in tandem with Grant’s public art, often sharing similar formal themes and techniques'. https://www.charleston.org.uk/event/outing-the-past-duncan-grant-and-the-erotic-drawings/?mc_cid=67f54e6aca&mc_eid=fdc10a983f