In 1909 Duncan Grant, a leading figure of the Bloomsbury Group of artists, visited the studio of Matisse, in Clamart on the outskirts of Paris, whose own preliminary sketch of dancers (La Dance, now at Museum of the Modern Art, New York) would possibly have been underway. It most likely inspired Grant’s painting which he made back in London at his studio in 21 Fitzroy Square around 1910/11. The influence of Gauguin, Cézanne and Van Gogh is also evident; they had been introduced to British audiences through the first exhibition of Fry’s Manet and the Post-Impressionists in 1910. It was purchased by his good friend Adrian Stephen (1883-1948), the younger brother of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, who only lived a few doors away in London at 29 Fitzroy Square. Shortly afterwards Dancers was bought by Eddie Marsh (1872-1953), civil servant, patron and elected buyer, and future chairman of the Contemporary Art Society between 1936 and 1952. Marsh began buying contemporary British art in 1911 with Grant’s Parrot Tulips (now in Southampton City Art Gallery) and bequeathed his modern collection of 342 works to the CAS.
A larger, more radical version of Dancers (1912) which was exhibited at Roger Fry’s Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition at the Grafton Galleries in October–December 1912 and bought by Hilton Young, later Lord Kennet of the Dene (1879-1960) was wiith Philip Mould & Co. in 2024.
