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Roger Fry
(1866-1934) Poinsettias in a Vasec.1915
Oil on canvas
91 x 71.1 cm. (35 3/4 x 28 in.)
Provenance
Cyril Andrews;
Private collection, U.K., and thence by descent;
Bonhams, London, 18 June 2025, lot 53, consigned by the above;
Philip Mould & Company, London, acquired from the above;
Literature
Randolph Schwabe, ‘Flowerpieces by Roger Fry; Carfax and Co.’, The Burlington Magazine. Vol. 32, No. 178, (January 1918) p. 38;
‘Gossip from New York’, Colour Magazine, May 1918, p.87 (illus.).
Exhibitions
Carfax Gallery, London, ‘Roger Fry: Flowerpieces’, November 1917;
Charleston, East Sussex, ‘Roger Fry’, 15 November 2025 - 15 March 2026.
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We are grateful to Richard Shone for his assistance with this catalogue note.
Painted around 1915, Poinsettias in a Vase belongs to a sustained period of concentration on still life in Roger Fry's work, culminating in his exhibition of twenty flower paintings at the Carfax Gallery in November 1917. Among the largest of his flowerpieces, the present painting demonstrates Fry's interest in the structural possibilities of natural forms, informed by his close study of Paul Cézanne.
Fry's interest in Cézanne extended well beyond the exhibitions through which he introduced Post-Impressionism to British audiences in 1910 and 1912. He particularly admired the Cézanne’s ability to organise forms of into coherent pictorial structures – concerns that were closely related to Clive Bell's theory of ‘significant form’, developed through discussions with Fry and articulated in his influential book Art (1914). Bell argued that the expressive power of painting resided principally in the relationships between lines, colours and forms, rather than in the...
We are grateful to Richard Shone for his assistance with this catalogue note.
Painted around 1915, Poinsettias in a Vase belongs to a sustained period of concentration on still life in Roger Fry's work, culminating in his exhibition of twenty flower paintings at the Carfax Gallery in November 1917. Among the largest of his flowerpieces, the present painting demonstrates Fry's interest in the structural possibilities of natural forms, informed by his close study of Paul Cézanne.
Fry's interest in Cézanne extended well beyond the exhibitions through which he introduced Post-Impressionism to British audiences in 1910 and 1912. He particularly admired the Cézanne’s ability to organise forms of into coherent pictorial structures – concerns that were closely related to Clive Bell's theory of ‘significant form’, developed through discussions with Fry and articulated in his influential book Art (1914). Bell argued that the expressive power of painting resided principally in the relationships between lines, colours and forms, rather than in the subject and story represented.
During the First World War, when opportunities for travel were restricted, Fry increasingly concentrated on painting objects and flowers. As he later reflected in his 1927 monograph on Cézanne, he maintained that still life was the arena where ‘we frequently catch the purest self-revelation of the artist.’ Nowhere did he stake this claim more effectively than in his 1917 exhibition of flowerpieces at the Carfax Gallery.
In Poinsettias, the plant's broad scarlet petals and elongated green stems provide the principal structure of the composition. The branching stems establish a loose vertical rhythm, counterbalanced by the angular forms of the papers pinned to the wall at left, one bearing the artist's initials. A dark passage of fabric hung on the right of the composition contrasts with the cooler blue-green tones behind the flowers. This design was influenced by Fry’s reading of Okakura Kakuzo's Book of Tea, which advised that nothing should be placed nearby to detract from the flowers unless the object is aesthetically balanced with them.
Complete with its original hand-painted frame, this painting is one of only a small number of his celebrated wartime still-life works to remain in private hands.
