Stella Bowen: Tusnelda’s interior
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
Tusnelda’s interior
painted in Cagnes-sur-Mer, France, 1936
oil on cardboard 63.5 x 75.7 cm
signed l.r., “STELLA/BOWEN”, not dated
verso, unfinished landscape in oil
private collection
During a brief respite from the gloom of English life, Stella Bowen went to paint for six weeks in her beloved south of France with an American writer, Ruth Harris. Harris rented a studio in Cagnes that had once been a stable, but it had been transformed by the owner, Tusnelda. She had made “a beautiful concrete cowl to the chimney and had painted a wavy blue line around the archway leading into the little pink alcove”, where Bowen slept.