Dora de Houghton Carrington (29 March 1893 – 11 March 1932), known generally asCarrington, was an English painter and decorative artist, remembered in part for her association with members of theBloomsbury Group, especially the writerLytton Strachey. From her time as an art student, she was known simply by her surname as she consideredDora to be "vulgar and sentimental".^[1] She was not well known as a painter during her lifetime, as she rarely exhibited and did not sign her work. She worked for a while at theOmega Workshops, and for theHogarth Press, designingwoodcuts.^[2]

Dora Carrington
Carrington withLytton Strachey
Born	Dora de Houghton Carrington (1893-03-29)29 March 1893 Hereford, England
Died	11 March 1932(1932-03-11) (aged 38) Newbury, Berkshire, England
Education	Slade School of Art
Alma mater	University College London

Carrington was born inHereford, England, to railway engineer Samuel Carrington, who worked for theEast India Company, and Charlotte (née Houghton). They had married in 1888 and had five children together of whom Dora was their fourth.^[3][1] She attended the all-girls'Bedford High School which emphasized art, and her parents paid for her to receive extra lessons in drawing. She won a number of awards in the national school competitions organised by theRoyal Drawing Society.^[1]

In 1910, she went to theSlade School of Art in central London where she subsequently won a scholarship and several other prizes; her fellow students includedDorothy Brett,Paul Nash,C. R. W. Nevinson andMark Gertler.^[4] All at one time or another were in love with her, as was Nash's younger brotherJohn Nash, who hoped to marry her.^[5][6] Gertler pursued Carrington for a number of years, and they had a brief sexual relationship during the years of theFirst World War.^[7]

During 1912, Carrington attended a series of lectures byMary Sargant Florence onfresco painting. The following year, she and Constance Lane completed three large frescoes for a library atAshridge in the Chilterns.^[1] Plans, with John and Paul Nash, for a cycle of frescoes for a church inUxbridge near London came to nothing with the start of the War.^[1] After graduating from the Slade, although short of money, Carrington stayed in London, living inSoho with a studio inChelsea.^[1] Her paintings were included in a number of group exhibitions, including with theNew English Art Club, and she stopped signing and dating her work.^[1] In 1914 Carrington's parents moved to Ibthorpe House in the village ofHurstbourne Tarrant in Hampshire, and shortly afterwards she moved there and set up her studio in an outbuilding.^[1]

Carrington was not a member of theBloomsbury Group, though she was closely associated with Bloomsbury and, more generally, with "Bohemian" attitudes, through her long relationship with the homosexual writerLytton Strachey, whom she first met in 1916. Distinguished by her cropped pageboy hair style (before it was fashionable) and somewhatandrogynous appearance, she was troubled by her sexuality; she is believed by some to have had an affair withHenrietta Bingham.^{[citation needed]} She also had a significant relationship with the writerGerald Brenan.

In June 1918,Virginia Woolf wrote of Carrington in her diary: "She is odd from her mixture of impulse & self consciousness. I wonder sometimes what she’s at: so eager to please, conciliatory, restless, & active.... [B]ut she is such a bustling eager creature, so red & solid, & at the same time inquisitive, that one can’t help liking her."^[8] Carrington first set up house with Lytton Strachey in November 1917, when they moved together toTidmarsh Mill House, near Pangbourne, Berkshire. Carrington metRalph Partridge, an Oxford friend of her younger brother Noel, in 1918. Partridge fell in love with Carrington and eventually, in 1921, Carrington agreed to marry him, not for love but to hold theménage à trois together.^[9] Strachey paid for the wedding, and accompanied the couple on their honeymoon in Venice. The three moved toHam Spray House inWiltshire in 1924; the house had been purchased by Strachey in the name of Partridge.^[10]

In 1926, Ralph Partridge began an affair withFrances Marshall, and left to live with her in London. His marriage to Carrington was effectively over, but he continued to visit her most weekends. In 1928 Carrington metBernard Penrose, a friend of Partridge and the younger brother of the artistRoland Penrose, and began an affair with him. The affair energized Carrington's artistic creativity, and she also collaborated with Penrose on the making of three films. However, Penrose wanted Carrington exclusively for himself, a commitment she refused to make because of her love for Strachey. The affair, her last with a man, ended when Carrington became pregnant and had an abortion.

During her lifetime, Carrington's work received no critical attention. The lack of encouragement may have kept her from displaying her artwork. Carrington's work can be described as progressive, because it did not fit into the mainstream of art in England at the time. In fact, her work was not considered art at all. It featured Victorian-style pictures which were made from coloured tinfoil and paper. Carrington included pen sketches in letters to her friends, with the intention of entertaining them. She also created woodblock prints, which were highly regarded. Her lesser-known work included painted pub signs and murals, ceramics, fireplaces, and tin trunks.

Carrington was better known for her landscape paintings,^{[by whom?]} which have been linked tosurrealism. Her landscapes blend the facts of visual perception with interior desires and fantasies. One work of art,Mountain Ranges from Yegen, Andalusia, 1924, shows the split in perspectives. There is an intimate foreground, and there is in the distance a view of the mountains. The main focus, on the middle mountains, exhibit the texture of human skin. This merges the notion of the personal being made public.^[11]

For many years, Carrington's art was neglected by the public, and her main notoriety was her relationship withLytton Strachey. On the day that she agreed to marry Partridge she wrote to Strachey, who was in Italy, what has been described as "one of the most moving love letters in the English language".^[12] She wrote, "I cried last night Lytton, whilst he slept by my side sleeping happily—I cried to think of a savage cynical fate which had made it impossible for my love ever to be used by you...". Strachey wrote back that "youdo know very well that I love you as something more than a friend, you angelic creature, whose goodness to me has made me happy for years, and whose presence in my life has been and always will be, one of the most important things in my life ...".^[13] On his deathbed Strachey said, "I always wanted to marry Carrington and I never did". His biographer calls that sentiment "not true; but he could not have said anything more deeply consoling".^[14] Upon his death, Strachey left Carrington £10,000 (roughly the equivalent of £576,000 in 2023).^[15]

Dora Carrington died by suicide on 11 March 1932, two months after Strachey's death, using a gun borrowed from her friend, Hon.Bryan Guinness (later 2nd Baron Moyne).^[4] Her body was cremated and the ashes buried under the laurels in the garden of Ham Spray House.

An accomplished painter of portraits, landscape and still-life, Carrington also worked in applied and decorative arts, painting on any type of surface she had at hand including inn signs, tiles and furniture. She also decorated pottery and designed the library at Ham Spray. In 1970David Garnett published a selection of letters and extracts from her diary, since which time critical and popular appreciation of her work has risen sharply.^[16] In 1978, Sir John Rothenstein, for nearly thirty years Director of theTate Gallery, London, called Dora Carrington "the most neglected serious painter of her time."^[17] Carrington was one of the five artists featured in the television seriesFive Women Painters made in 1989 by theArts Council andChannel 4,^[18] with accompanying book published by Lennard.^[19] In 1995 she was the subject of a major retrospective exhibition at theBarbican Art Gallery in London^[20] and in 2024–2025 there was another retrospective at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, co-curated by Anne Chisholm and Ariane Banks.^[21] Two of her works are in the Tate Gallery.^[22]

• Diana Mitford, a close friend, profiles Carrington inLoved Ones (1985).
• Gerald Brenan writes about Carrington's visit to him in Spain in his 1957 autobiographical workSouth from Granada.
• In his first novelCrome Yellow,Aldous Huxley based the character of Mary Bracegirdle on Carrington, and described how she and he slept on the roof of "Lollipop Hall", based on LadyOttoline Morrell's home. He chose the name "Bracegirdle" because of Dora's chastity.^[1]
• Carrington is the inspiration for the character Elinor Brooke inPat Barker's trilogy of novels,Life Class (2008),Toby's Room (2013) andNoonday (2016).

Radio:Portrayed by Morwenna Banks as 'Barrington' in 'Gloomsbury' by Sue Limb, a five part series parodying the Bloomsbury Group on BBC Radio 4, 2012-2018.

• Emma Thompson portrays Carrington in the 1995 British biographical filmCarrington, written and directed byChristopher Hampton based on the bookLytton Strachey byMichael Holroyd.
• Jessica Kate Meyer portrays Carrington in the 2003Goya Award winning Spanish filmAl sur de Granada, written and directed byFernando Colomo, based on the 1957 autobiographical bookSouth from Granada byGerald Brenan.

• Noel Carrington.Carrington, Paintings, Drawings and Decorations. Oxford: Oxford Polytechnic Press, 1978; New York, Thames & Hudson, 1980. Foreword bySir John Rothenstein.
• (in Spanish)Gerald Brenan.Diarios sobre Dora Carrington y otros escritos (1925-1932). Editorial Confluencias, 2012.
• Maria Tamboukou.Visual Lives: Dora Carrington’s Letters, Drawings and Paintings. BSA Auto/Biography Study Group, 2010 (Auto/Biography Monograph Series).

• Dora Carrington Collection, 1912-1965 (1.67 linear feet) are housed at theHarry Ransom Center at theUniversity of Texas at Austin
• Lytton Strachey collection of papers, 1904-1934 (596 items) are housed at theNew York Public Library
• Gerald Brenan Collection, 1911-1978 (8.75 linear feet) are housed at theHarry Ransom Center at theUniversity of Texas at Austin

• 19 artworks by or after Dora Carrington at theArt UK site
• The Grove Dictionary of Art
• Farm at Watendlath (1921)
• Dora Carrington CollectionArchived 18 February 2012 at theWayback Machine at theHarry Ransom Center at theUniversity of Texas at Austin
• 'Carrington (and Woolf) in Cambridge, 1928', by Peter Murray Jones,Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, Vol.XIII Pt.3, 2006
• "Archival material relating to Dora Carrington".UK National Archives. 
• Portraits of Dora Carrington at theNational Portrait Gallery, London