Rosie Parmley: On the subject of Dora Carrington

Rosie’s students are going back to the early 1900s, learning all about the British artist Dora Carrington, who was born in 1893. Her courses this semester are all about rigor using traditional skills in drawing and painting to build confidence. The results are inspiring.

The Dora Carrington exhibition at the Pallant House (Chichester) is a must for all art lovers. It includes delicate pencil drawings, letters, sketches, portraits, landscapes, figure compositions and designs for the Omega Workshops and Hogarth Press (owned by Leonard and Virgina Woolf). There are also videos that capture the fun and games in the garden at Charleston House. 

Dora was a vibrant active student at the Slade School  of art, 1910-14. She was part of the younger generation of “Bloomsbury” artists who were nurtured and protected under the wings of the elders - Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell, Lytton Strachey and Virgina Woolf. From 1917 she lived and loved the writer, Lytton Strachey.

Her emotional life was complex and often distressing, for Strachey, whom she was madly in love with, was a homosexual. Carrington married another man (Ralph Partridge) and had numerous affairs with men and women. Strachey paid for Dora’s wedding, the house they lived in and even went on their honey moon! Nevertheless, she was utterly devoted to Strachey and she committed suicide a few weeks after his death.  Dora killed herself with a borrowed shot gun in 1932 at the age of 39.

Escape into the lives of the Bloomsbury group in this vivid retrospective of the artist Dora Carrington. The exhibition is on until 27th April at the Pallant House, Chichester. 

Rosies courses run throughout the year and mirror current exhibitions. She shares her expert eye on painting with her passion for art and the skills and processes utilised. To find out more about Rosie and get in touch, head to her website.