Richard Shone. The Art of Bloomsbury. London: Tate Gallery, 1999.

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ROGER FRY

139 Spring in Provence 1931
Oil on canvas 79.6 x 65 cm (31 3/8 x 25 5/8)
Inscribed 'Roger Fry' b.l.
Vancouver Art Gallery Founders Fund

With his friends the writers Charles and Marie Mauron, Fry acquired the Mas d'Angirany in early 1931. It was (and still is under then name Mas Gavon) a typical Provencal farmhouse on the outskirts of St. Remy near the celebrated Greco-Roman triumphal arch and mausoleum known as Les Antiques, the asylum of St. Paul-de Mausol, where Van Gogh was confined in 1889-90, and the spectacular remains of the Hellenic Roman town of Glanum (see no. 140). Visible from the terrace of the modest two-storey house, through olive, ilex and cypress trees, is the range of the Alpilles dominated by the pointed profile of Mont Gaussier. Fry furnished the house in April 1931 and wrote of developments to Vanessa Bell: '[Mauron] has picked up four great stone pillars which make the supports for the treille [vine arbour] which will come when the vines grow. I got in Beaucaire two huge earthenware vases which stand between the pillars on either side of the great stone table which is in the centre. And the view is inconceivably lovely' (18 April 1931: TGA). Fry sent a drawing of the view in his letter to Bell and, later, some photographs (fig. 129) of the house. These show the stone pillar and vase on the terrace as depicted by Fry from a doorway beyond the right of the photograph. The absence of the vine trellis from both no. 139 and the photographs is evidence of a date of 1931 for the painting.

The framing device of doors and windows, here frankly espoused, is more frequent in Bell's and Grant's work than it is in Fry's. He preferred to go out into the landscape itself and was indefatigable in his search for the appropriate motif, greatly helped by his learning to drive in 1928. In his letters he often chides Bell for her relatively unadventurous attitude to landscape and she herself admitted that 'I don't think I'm nearly as enterprising as you (or Duncan) about painting anything I don't find at my door' (Bell to Fry, 16 September 1921: TGA). Richard Morphet has written of Fry's ability 'simultaneously to suggest both the immediate materiality and the endurance through

extended time of the phenomena he represents' (see Morphet 1980, p.487). Spring in Provence perfectly encapsulates this in the most unaffected and accessible way as the viewer is drawn from the immediate here-and-now of the chair, through a succession of repoussoirs—pillars, trees, roof—to the outlandish silhouette of the distant mountains. The 'paradise' Fry found here, combining domestic life, creativity and timeless landscape was, however, short-lived. Professional obligations in London and elsewhere curbed the amount of time he was able to spend at the Mas D'Angirany before his unexpected death in 1934.

Prov: Bt from Agnew's by Vancouver Art Gallery 1933
Ex: Pictures by Roger Fry, Agnew's 1933 (20); Fredericton 1977 (18. repr.)
Lit: 'Mr. Roger Fry's Pictures at Messrs. Agnew's, Apollo. 18 Aug. 1933 (p.125).