Stella Bowen: Villefranche
Art, Love and War
- Periods:
- To England
- An artist's journey
- Inner worlds
- The return to England
- The war years
Period: An artist's journey
Villefranche
painted in Cap Ferrat, France, 1923
oil on wood panel 34.6 x 26.7 cm
not signed, not dated
private collection
Ford and Bowen experienced a sense of energy and freedom in the south of France. Ford suggested that Bowen’s paintings from this time resembled travel posters, with their colourful graphic style. But when she went on a trip to Italy Bowen found another source of inspiration:
I returned to Cap Ferrat, full of ideas about formal composition and thin paint . . . [it was] the beginning of a long phase when I deliberately flattened out shadows and concentrated everything on linear design. I never began to paint until I had a composition which I thought would stand up as a line drawing, and once started, I never altered a thing.