And this is the same thing but in a different colour way. Paul Smith gave an interview in which he defined why he loves Anni Albers’ work so much, it’s in the Guardian here. The comparison with modern music is interesting. And nice to see that the great Paul Smith’s office is so tidy…

There is an Anni Albers exhibition opening at Tate Modern on Thursday. This 1926 textile is familiar to Persephone readers because we used as a the endpaper for On the Other Side. Here is the Forum about it.

And just to show that Fairlie Harmar did not only paint beauty and domesticity: Women RAF Workers Drilling at Andover 1917 is at the Imperial War Museum. Even with a name which could have been a man’s name it is a huge pity this superb artist’s work is not better known.

Goodness – Fairlie Harmar (beautiful name, in fact in her other life, as it were, she was also Viscountess Harberton) was a superb painter. This is far more than a mere Sunday painting. But where is it? Could these houses have been bombed? Someone wrote about Monday’s painting ‘I don’t think it’s Chiswick Mall, because the opposite bank in Chiswick is just trees – and St Paul’s School – whereas the opposite bank here is warehouses. Maybe Putney/Fulham? Or Chelsea?’ Ah ha, googling her name with Chelsea and Cheyne Walk reveals the Cheyne Walkers! There is a drawing for sale on eBay here. The sale notice says: ‘She studied at the Slade School of Art under Henry Tonks and Fred Brown, exhibited widely in Britain and abroad and was elected a member of the New English Art Club in 1917. Living in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, she was close neighbours with Ethel Walker, Beatrice Bland and Margaret Fisher Prout and this distinguished group of women artists came to be known as the ‘Cheyne Walkers’. Kenneth McConkey raised the question – “Was there a collective sensibility in the work of these ‘Slade Ladies’? In most cases, as landscape and still-life painters, they were recognisably pupils of Brown and Tonks…” By the early 1930s Harmar and her female colleagues were beginning to dominate the annual exhibitions of the New English Art Club, reviewers noting “a ripple of feminine gaiety’ enlivening the shows.” Harmar developed a sophisticated impressionist technique, but never lost the subtle tonality which her Slade training had provided.’

After a Game of Tennis was painted in 1923 and is now at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

There are two versions of Breakfast in Bed, both beautiful and full of fascinating domestic detail..

The new Biannually and Catalogue have gone to the printer: the painting used to illustrate Young Anne is by Fairlie Harmar (1876-1945) so she is the subject of the Post this week. The stunning Garden Gate was painted in 1921 and is in the UCL collection. Can anyone identify the setting? Could it be Chiswick Mall on the Thames?