This Dark Country Women Artists, Still Life and Intimacy in the Early Twentieth Century
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Rebecca Birrell grew up in Southport, and lives in Cambridge. She studied English Literature at UCL, followed by Women’s Studies at the University of Oxford. She has occupied curatorial positions at the Jewish Museum London, the Department of Prints and Drawing at the British Museum and at the Charleston Trust. In 2018 she undertook a fellowship at the Yale Centre for British Art. She completed her PhD at the Edinburgh College of Art. She is a curator in the Department of Paintings, Drawings and Prints at the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge.Blending flights of poetic rhapsody with more traditional critical language, <i>This Dark Country</i> is <b>as seductive as it is scholarly </b>... <b>Riveting</b>
Financial Times
[A] <b>wonderful</b> book. I am<b> impressed and fascinated</b>. It is<b> beautifully written</b>. Each woman artist, in this<b> superb</b> book, addresses the need to transform the confines she inhabits into a space of <b>empowerment</b>. These artists all lived and worked in the first part of the twentieth century yet their legacy <b>continues to be relevant </b>
- Celia Paul,
A <b>brilliant book</b> ... A<b> truly radical</b> aesthetics fit for the twenty-first century at last!
- Thérèse Oulton,
A <b>beautifully written and important</b> art historical work, <i>This Dark Country</i> is <b>a magnificent debut</b> by <b>one of Britain’s most electrifying new talents</b>. I cannot wait to read what she writes next!
- Camilla Grudova, author of THE DOLL's ALPHABET,
[An]<b> unusual and refreshing</b> group biography of artists ... I loved Birrell's <b>brilliant </b><b>re-apprehension</b> of Rodin’s <i>The Thinker</i> through the experience of Gwen John. And her explanation of the magnitude of rooms and importance of room, in these women’s lives
- Leanne Shapton,
[A]<b> beautiful, bold new book</b> … explores the desires and ambitions of women artists, <b>moving beyond the frame to reflect lives that rarely fit convention</b>
- Chlöe Ashby, Elephant
Birrell’s blend of art criticism and biography works best when it is tethered to real-world calculation. She is particularly good at<b> teasing out the stubborn material facts that underpin the most serene of still lifes</b>
- Kathryn Hughes, Guardian
Rebecca Birrell urges us to <b>ask new questions</b> about gender and genre, domesticity and work … <b>At its heart is the challenge </b>of understanding the lives and works of women whose desires and ambitions often demanded secrecy, evasion and ambiguity
- Norma Clarke, Literary Review
[I was] <b>captivated</b> by this<b> extraordinary</b> book - stayed up way too late scribbling my <b>astonishment</b> on all the pages
- Doireann Ní Ghríofa, author of 'A Ghost in the Throat',
This is a <b>bold</b>, <b>unusual</b> book, filled with archival research, <b>exuberant ideas</b> and <b>a determination to counter misogyny</b>
- Diana Souhami, RA Magazine
<p>We have not generally thought of the still life as a radical feminist genre – until now. In <i>This Dark Country</i>, Rebecca Birrell gives a sensitive, deeply researched look at the lives behind the still lives, showing us how for a group of early twentieth-century women artists the home became a radical feminist space in which to redefine domesticity and their relationships to the world outside. There is a calm and companionable stillness to Birrell’s prose, too; I loved seeing these paintings through Birrell’s eyes.</p>
- Lauren Elkin,
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