?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 700 - $ 900
Carrington, Dora (1893-1932) Illustrated Autograph Letter Signed to Maynard Keynes.
Asheham House, Sussex, 1917.
Single sheet of wove paper inscribed over both sides, inviting Keynes to a festive occasion, with the further inducement of a little sketch of the proposed scene in back ink at the foot of the page recto; "You must come to our feast on Saturday night at Asheham [House]. There will [be] much drinking & merry-making -- +++++ A pond to slide on, & a big [drawing of the moon] to light the way"; Carrington also notes that Saxon [Sydney-Turner] is better but "very tiresome and almost impossible to control," and that Barbara [Hiles] sends love; old folds, with the original envelope, addressed to Keynes care of Vanessa Bell's husband Clive; 6 7/8 x 5 in.
Asheham house, near the village of Beddingham, was occupied by Virginia Woolf between 1912 and 1919, while her sister, Vanessa Bell was living at Charleston. Woolf and her husband Leonard used it as a weekend and holiday house before inhabiting Monk's House. The Woolfs thought it was haunted.
"Because of her Bohemian lifestyle, connection with the Bloomsbury group, short hair, and rejection of many traditional women's roles, Dora Carrington seemed to symbolize the 'new' and 'modern' woman of the early 20th century. [...] Her life was a series of unresolved, opposing tensions, and its consistency lay in her ambivalence to many of the problems she faced: she loved truth but constantly lied; she rejected her lovers but continually lured them back; she was happiest when she painted, but her paintings frequently depressed her." (Quoted from Gretchen Gerzina's Carrington, London: John Murray, 1989.)
