This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| Please note: Artists not classified as American in our database may have limited biographical data
compared to the extensive information about American artists.
 English woman, Dora de Houghton Carrington (1893-1932) was an artist
and a Bloomsbury bohemian who loved and was loved by both men and
women. She even managed to make her name interesting. She
was born Dora de Houghton Carrington but was known in Bloomsbury only
by her surname. She was the fourth of five children born to
Samuel Carrington and Charlotte Houghton, and in 1902 the family moved
to Bedford, England where she attended a girls' high school, which
emphasized sports, music, and drawing. The teachers encouraged
her drawing and her parents paid for her to attend extra drawing
classes in the afternoons. In 1910 she won a scholarship to the
Slade School of Art in London and studied there with Henry Tonks.
The Slade at that time was a centre of what we would now call radical
chic. She started a new fashion at the school by cutting her hair into
a kind of pudding-bowl cut. She did well at the Slade, winning
several prizes and moving quickly through the courses. When
Carrington was eighteen she met Mark Gertler (1897-1939), who was a
very strong influence on this first phase of her life as an
artist. He introduced her to the society hostess Lady Ottoline
Morrell, and thus into the Bloomsbury group.
Carrington acquitted herself well at the Slade, winning several prizes
and moving quickly through the courses. She left school in 1914 and
returned to her parents' home to decide on her next step. She
enjoyed being in the country but felt stifled by the lack of
intellectual stimulation in general and her mother in particular.
Gertler introduced her to Lady Ottoline Morrell, and thus into the
Bloomsbury group of artists and writers. It was while visiting
Morrell at Garsington Manor in 1915 that Carrington was introduced to
Lytton Strachey, a writer and confirmed homosexual. Gertler,
feeling that Strachey could act as a safe go-between for himself,
encouraged their friendship. To his dismay, Carrington fell
inexplicably and deeply in love with Strachey, a love that would last
for the rest of her life and cause her to follow him from life into
death.
In 1917 Carrington's relationship with Gertler ended and when Strachey
rented Mill House, Tidmarsh, she moved in with him. Carrington
met Ralph Partridge, an Oxford friend of her younger brother Noel, in
1918. Partridge fell in love with Carrington and, accepting that
she was still in love with Strachey and would not give up her platonic
relationship or living arrangements with him, married her in
1921. In 1924 he and Strachey purchased the lease to Ham Spray
House, near Hungerford, and all three lived out their lives there.
Over the next eight years Carrington divided her time between domestic
chores, caring for Strachey whose health was erratic, and her art
work. She painted on almost any medium she could find including
glass, tiles, pub signs, and the walls of friends' homes; she also made
woodcuts for Hogarth Press and did some leather work. She had two
well-known affairs, one with Gerald Brenan, an army friend of
Partridge's, and the other with a sailor, Beakus Penrose. In 1926
Partridge formed an attachment to Frances Marshall, ending his marriage
with Carrington in spirit, if not in law, but maintained his role of
manager for Ham Spray House, visiting most weekends.
In November 1931 Strachey became suddenly and violently ill. Doctors
fluctuated between diagnoses of typhoid fever and ulcerative colitis,
but his condition--stomach cancer--was not accurately diagnosed until
an autopsy was performed. Round the clock nurses were hired and
various treatments were tried. In late December he took a turn
for the worse and on December 20 Carrington attempted suicide by
shutting herself in the garage with the car running. Partridge
rescued her and she recovered enough to spend the last few days of
Strachey's life taking her turn watching over him. On January 21,
1932, Strachey died. The greatest concern of their friends now
became preventing Carrington from killing herself; arrangements were
made to keep her occupied and attended. In March Carrington was
planning for a trip to France and her friends began to feel less
concern, but she also borrowed a gun from a neighbor, ostensibly to
shoot rabbits in her garden. On March 11, 1932, she shot herself
fatally. She was found before she died and Ralph Partridge, Frances
Marshall, and David Garnett arrived at Ham Spray House in time to say
good-bye.
Sources:
http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/fa/carrington.dora.html
Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center
http://www.mantex.co.uk/ou/a319/carrngtn.htm
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This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| Please note: Artists not classified as American in our database may have limited biographical data
compared to the extensive information about American artists.
 The following was written and compiled by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher from Laguna Woods, California:
Dora Carrington was born in England in 1893. She studied at the Slade School under Tonks and Steer and at Bedford. She was the most inexplicable of the group known as the Bloomsburyites in the mid 20th century; she was a lyrical but spasmodic painter. She was the first of a new generation of modern girls. With her short honey-colored hair, worn thick and straight like a Florentine page boy’s, she radiated an extraordinary aura of attractiveness. She was, however, fiercely independent, almost resenting having been born a girl and dropping the name Dora altogether. Her painting was as naive and moody as her curiously baffling personality.
She pursued her frustrating and ultimately tragic love affair with author Lytton Strachey in the romantic setting of his country home from 1916. Strachey was attracted to Mark Gertler, who was infatuated with Carrington. Carrington and Strachey lived together at Mill House. While there she married Ralph Partridge, a man to whom Strachey was also drawn. In 1932, a year following Strachey’s death, she committed suicide.
Source:
Dictionary of Women Artists by Chris Petteys
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