Stella Bowen: Interior, Chelsea Gardens

Art, Love and War

Periods:
To England
An artist's journey
Inner worlds
The return to England
The war years

Period: The return to England

Interior, Chelsea Gardens
painted in Chelsea, London, c. 1934
oil on cardboard 71 x 54.6 cm
signed l.r., incised “STELLA/BOWEN”, not dated
verso, unfinished landscape in oil
Private collection

Stella Bowen lived in a succession of rented apartments for most of her adult life, always seeking to transform them into places of charm and dignity. Many of her paintings reflect her personal values: her preoccupation with finding and making a home, and with creating interiors through which she found both inspiration and self-expression.

The move back to London in 1933 was made sadder by the absence of Ford and by her fondness for France. At first she stayed in Chelsea with Muriel Hueffer, Ford’s sister-in-law, and gradually began to come to terms with English life, comforted somewhat by the “slack and confident atmosphere of London after the anxieties of Paris”.