Two landscapes that are represented here, created by Vanessa Bell with a gap of ten years. “The Pond in Charleston,” written by the artist in 1916, is not yet free of her enthusiasm for post-impressionism and abstraction. This work was very popular with Duncan Grant. He said that the Sussex landscape was transmitted here “in an amazingly warm range, where thin, brown, gray and reddish tones predominate.”
It is completely different from the “Pond in Charleston” “The Open Door”, which Vanessa Bell wrote in 1926. All the lessons she has received from Impressionists, Fauvists and Abstractionists, look here quite well-mastered. Vanessa Bell no longer gives in to anyone’s influence, but she chooses what she needs. The artist with great taste and skill depicts here a view opening from the doors of her workshop in Charleston.