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Duncan Grant was a central figure in the Bloomsbury Group, a liberal band of London-based artists, writers, and intellectuals, allied through their political ideals. The First World War changed their metropolitan lifestyle dramatically. During the War, Duncan Grant and fellow painter Vanessa Bell moved to Charleston, an old farmhouse in East Sussex.

Industrious activity abounded Charleston Farmhouse and this painting offers an insight into the multitude of household tasks undertaken by the staff who worked there. When Grant and Bell first moved into Charleston, there was no running water, electricity, or heating. Four domestic staff moved with them to assist with the day-to-day running of the house throughout the First World War, and the kitchen soon became a space operated predominantly by the staff.

Years later, at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the painters once again abandoned their London lifestyles and respective studios and moved back to Charleston. The kitchen was soon reinstated as a hub...

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Duncan Grant was a central figure in the Bloomsbury Group, a liberal band of London-based artists, writers, and intellectuals, allied through their political ideals. The First World War changed their metropolitan lifestyle dramatically. During the War, Duncan Grant and fellow painter Vanessa Bell moved to Charleston, an old farmhouse in East Sussex.

Industrious activity abounded Charleston Farmhouse and this painting offers an insight into the multitude of household tasks undertaken by the staff who worked there. When Grant and Bell first moved into Charleston, there was no running water, electricity, or heating. Four domestic staff moved with them to assist with the day-to-day running of the house throughout the First World War, and the kitchen soon became a space operated predominantly by the staff.

Years later, at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the painters once again abandoned their London lifestyles and respective studios and moved back to Charleston. The kitchen was soon reinstated as a hub of culinary and domestic enterprise.

This painting of two women salting bacon at the kitchen table is comparable in composition and scale to Grant’s earlier canvas The Pig's Carcass, 1944 [currently with Philip Mould & Company], which was exhibited in Grant’s 1945 solo exhibition at the Leicester Galleries, London. Both paintings display the recognisable table in the forefront of the composition and a low shelf in the background, adorned with the same large terracotta pot and glass container. The same impressionist brushstrokes govern the style of both paintings; Bacon Salting is built up from a quick succession of horizontal strokes which draw the eye across the canvas.

Grant’s focus on this domestic scene in many ways reflects his transition from a life of inter-war metropolitan freedom and foreign travel to the protective world of Charleston. Charleston remained a countryside haven for Grant and the Bloomsbury circle to avoid the turmoil of international conflict. The kitchen, in particular, seems to play a crucial role in providing this respite, evidenced in the paintings of it that Grant and Bell produced during the Second World War.

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500 Years of British Art