CARRINGTON: JOANNA CARRINGTON

"An artist born" is the phrase which introduces the painter Joanna Carrington (1931-2003) in this fully illustrated survey of her life. Joanna was the daughter of Noel Carrington who created Puffin books and niece of the famous Bloomsbury artist Dora Carrington, who committed suicide following the death of Lytton Strachey. At just seventeen years old she was described by Cedric Morris as "really exceptional and a born painter. I have never had a student who showed so much promise". Joanna later studied under Leger in Paris. Joanna wrote and illustrated hundreds of letters, which together with photographs of the artist and witty caricatures of her friends, provided the author, her husband Christopher Mason, with material for this memoir. The chief glory of this beautiful book is in the sixty colour illustrations of Joanna Carrington's still lifes, interiors and landscapes from different periods of her life. The book also deals with her alter ego Reginald Pepper, whose naive art was exhibited for a number of years without anybody being aware of the identity of the real artist.