'Lytton Strachey', Henry Lamb

Artwork details

Artist

Henry Lamb (1883‑1960)

Title

Lytton Strachey

Date 1914

MediumOil paint on canvas

Dimensionssupport: 2445 x 1784 mm frame: 2525 x 1870 x 75 mm

Collection

Tate

Acquisition Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1957

Reference

T00118

On display at Tate Britain

Theme: Looking at the View

Room: Looking at the View

Display caption

Giles Lytton Strachey (1880-1932) was a critic and biographer who established a reputation with his book 'Eminent Victorians', published in 1918. He was one of the members of the so-called Bloomsbury Group, which included the writer Virginia Woolf and the painters Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. Lamb painted a small portrait of Strachey in his studio in the Vale of Health, Hampstead in 1912, and then painted this grand larger version two years later. Strachey once said that he was unable to lift a match before breakfast and this portrait shows him in a typically languid pose.

August 2004