Dora Carrington Biography

Dora de Houghton Carrington (1893–1932), generally known as Carrington, was an English painter and decorative artist associated with the Bloomsbury circle. Although she rarely exhibited or signed her paintings, she developed a distinctive approach to landscape and portraiture and worked across a remarkable range of decorative media.

Born in Hereford on 29 March 1893, Carrington grew up in Bedford and attended Bedford High School, where her talent for drawing was encouraged. In 1910 she entered the Slade School of Fine Art in London, studying under Henry Tonks. Her fellow students included Paul Nash, C. R. W. Nevinson and Mark Gertler, with whom she had a complicated romantic relationship. At the Slade she won prizes for her figure drawing and became known simply by her surname.

Carrington's early work included portraits and lively drawings. She contributed designs and woodcuts to the Hogarth Press and worked with the Omega Workshops, both associated with Bloomsbury artists. Her interests extended to painted furniture, ceramics, pub signs, murals and decorative objects, alongside drawings and illustrations enclosed in letters to friends.

In 1916 Carrington met the writer Lytton Strachey, with whom she formed a close and enduring attachment. They shared a home at Tidmarsh Mill in Berkshire from 1917. In 1921 she married Ralph Partridge, and the three later lived at Ham Spray House in Wiltshire. Her unusual domestic circumstances and friendships became better known than her work during her lifetime, but they also provided subjects and settings for her art.

Carrington's landscapes, including views of the Berkshire Downs and the Wiltshire countryside, often combine carefully observed features with an imaginative sense of form and atmosphere. Her paintings of houses, hills and gardens have an intimate, sometimes dreamlike quality. She also produced portraits that reveal an attentive eye for character rather than conventional idealisation.

After Strachey died in January 1932, Carrington became deeply distressed. She died by suicide on 11 March 1932, aged 38. Interest in her art grew considerably in the decades that followed, allowing her paintings to be appreciated beyond the story of her personal life.

Explore our Dora Carrington 20 High Resolution Images collection for downloadable examples of her work.