First, a window into the past. Charleston Farmhouse and the bedroom of the painter Vanessa Bell – 1918.
They say that the devil is in the detail – but sometimes a detail brings a blessing, a benediction. So it is here, in two painterly details above and below a window:
Duncan Grant, Vanessa’s long term love, and also an artist, painted a cockerel above her window to wake her up in the morning and a dog below to guard her at night! The dog was based on her lurcher, Henry. He looks here, rather comically pacific for such a role.
In this short video, we see more of their creative relationship. This extraordinary portrait is thought to have been painted on an old door from Charleston… providing now a metaphysical doorway into the past:
