This Dark Country

Women Artists, Still Life and Intimacy in the Early Twentieth Century

Shortlisted for the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize 2022

Longlisted for the William M B Berger Prize for British Art History 2022

Guardian Art Book of the Year 2021

A dazzling, boldly original work that tells the powerful and passionate stories of a group of extraordinary women as glimpsed through their still life paintings

What is contained in a still life – and what falls out of the frame? For women artists in the early twentieth century, such as Dora Carrington, Vanessa Bell and Gwen John, this art form was a conduit for their lives, their rebellions, their quietly subversive loves for men and women.

But for every artist whom we remember, there are those whose work is almost forgotten. In This Dark Country, Rebecca Birrell conducts a dazzling fusion of group biography and art criticism, exploring, from the celebrated to the overlooked, the structures of intimacy that make – and dismantle – our worlds.

'A brilliant book . A truly radical aesthetics fit for the twenty-first century at last!' - Thérèse Oulton

'[A] wonderful book. I am impressed and fascinated. It is beautifully written' - Celia Paul

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