In the first Bonhams sale attended by members of the public after the relaxation
of lockdown restrictions, paintings by members of the celebrated Bloomsbury Group caused quite a stir. This famed group of artists, writers and academics – who, according to satirist Dorothy Parker, ‘lived in squares, painted in circles, and loved in triangles’ – took its name from the area in London where they lived and socialised, but is more often associated with Charleston Farmhouse in East Sussex, home of Duncan Grant andVanessa Bell. This painting, a c1911 portrait of the novelist EM Forster by fellow group member Roger Fry, sold for £325,062, trumping its meagre estimate of £30,000-£50,000 and setting a new world record for an artwork by Fry at auction.
For more information on the sale, visit bonhams.com.
