Art UK has updated its cookies policy. By using this website you are agreeing to the use of cookies. To find out more read our updated Use of Cookies policy and our updated Privacy policy.

Self Portrait
Photo credit: Jerwood Collection

Self Portrait 1913

Dora Carrington (1893–1932)

Jerwood Collection

British painter and designer, born in Hereford into a comfortable middle-class family. She studied at the *Slade School, 1910–14, and from 1917 lived with the writer Lytton Strachey, one of the leading figures of the *Bloomsbury Group. Her emotional life was complex and often distressing, for Strachey was a homosexual and Carrington married another man (Ralph Partridge) and had numerous affairs. Nevertheless, she was utterly devoted to Strachey and she committed suicide a few weeks after his death. Carrington painted portraits, landscapes, and figure compositions, did designs for the *Omega Workshops and for the Hogarth Press (owned by Leonard and Virginia Woolf), and in her later life put a good deal of time into decorative work at her house Ham Spray in Wiltshire, where she lived with her husband and Strachey from 1924.

Text source: A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art (Oxford University Press)

Artworks by Dora Carrington

  • Mrs Box
    Mrs Box Dora Carrington (1893–1932)
    The Higgins Bedford
  • Scene from the Strachey Gramophone
    Scene from the Strachey Gramophone Dora Carrington (1893–1932)
    Portsmouth Museums and Visitor Services
  • Self Portrait
    Self Portrait Dora Carrington (1893–1932)
    Jerwood Collection
  • Gerald Brenan
    Gerald Brenan Dora Carrington (1893–1932)
    National Portrait Gallery, London
  • Dora Carrington
    Dora Carrington Dora Carrington (1893–1932)
    National Portrait Gallery, London
  • Spanish Boy, the Accordion Player
    Spanish Boy, the Accordion Player Dora Carrington (1893–1932)
    The Higgins Bedford
  • Iris Tree on a Horse
    Iris Tree on a Horse Dora Carrington (1893–1932)
    The Ingram Collection of Modern British and Contemporary Art
  • 13 more

Stories

Find out more

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Biography on Oxford Art Online
Dora Carrington trained at the Slade School of Fine Art (1910–14), where she became recognised for her exquisite draftsmanship as well as her striking striking looks which combined short hair and an overtly androgynous way of dressing. She also preferred to be known just as ‘Carrington’.

After a stormy relationship with Mark Gertler (1891–1939), she set up house with the homosexual writer Lytton Strachey and became part of the Bloomsbury Group. They were later joined by Ralph Partridge, whom she married in 1921. During this time, she provided illustrations for publications by the Hogarth Press, including Two Stories (1917). Left bereft after Strachey’s death in January 1932, she committed suicide in March that year.

Carrington was little known as an artist during her lifetime, and since her early death attention has focused more on her romances than her art; however, her work was exhibited in 1970, at the Upper Grosvenor Galleries in London, and in 1978 at the Christ Church Picture Gallery in Oxford, and she was the subject of a major retrospective exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery in 1995.

Biography from Liss Llewellyn

Venues

View all 8

Do you know someone who would love this resource?
Tell them about it...