Stella Bowen
Stella Bowen was an Australian artist and writer. Early in 1918, Bowen met and fell in love with the writer Ford Madox Ford and the couple fled to rural England. However, by 1922, the family was fed up with the hardships of life in the English countryside and moved to Paris. Caught up in the bohemian café society of Paris, Ford started a literary magazine and was a leading figure among the expatriate writers. Meanwhile, Bowen found her first studio, and she started to paint.
It is the late 1930s in France; the people in this group are artists or writers. At this point, Bowen had developed a clientele for her casual group portraits, which she called “conversation pieces.” Unfortunately, many of these portraits remain undiscovered. The ensemble captured in Cagnes reflects her admiration for the laid-back Provençal lifestyle. Like she described:
Around one-thirty, someone would casually suggest, "How about lunch?" and one of us would head down to Mme Nickolai's for a fresh baguette, some butter, black olives, garlic sausage, and a slice of ripe fromage de brie. A liter of red wine transformed this into a true feast, and the meal would linger on as a convivial gathering, a well-deserved reward for a morning's artistic efforts.
This artwork embodies all the elements dear to Bowen: companionship, warmth, and conversation. Its animated surface and softly diffused light cultivates a relaxed ambiance, further enhanced by her swift brushwork.
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