Barbara Dorf 

(London 1933-2016)

White Roses, 1970

oil on board

signed verso on a brown paper label, and with the artist's studio label, and signed exhibition history

12 x 9.5 cm.

Provenance

From the estate of Francis & Larissa Haskell. 

Exhibited

London, Charles Keyser Gallery, 1971

Oxford, St Catherine's College, December 1972, where presumably purchased by Francis & Larissa Haskell.

Barbara Dorf studied at the Central School of Art and Crafts, and at the Slade, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. She went on to teach at the Ruskin School of Drawing in Oxford, and was a regular exhibitor with the New English Art Club and at the Royal Academy, specialising in particular in architecutral drawings in watercolour and charcoal. She was great friends with the author Iris Murdoch and Kingston University holds an archive of their correspondence. 

Francis Haskell (1928-2000) was an art historian, author and professor of art history at Oxford University. His wife Larissa (1931-2024) was a noted Russian art historian, and curator of Venetian Drawings at the Hermitage. A note on the back of this painting by the artist states that this is one of a series of white rose paintings, with others in the collections of Lady Korda, Dr. Carritt, and Iris Murdoch.