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Aldous Huxley

© estate of Vanessa Bell. All rights reserved, DACS 2024. Image credit: National Portrait Gallery, London

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During the interwar years, Huxley was arguably Britain's best-known novelist following the international success of Brave New World (1932). Its success came after a string of satirical works: Crome Yellow (1921), Antic Hay (1923) and Those Barren Leaves (1925). Huxley later settled in the USA. There, the tone of his writing gravitated towards pacifism and metaphysics, prompted partly by interest in Hindu Vedantist thought. These aspects of his development are evident in Ends and Means (1937). His later writing was preoccupied with the potential of human capability, notably in the autobiographical The Doors of Perception (1953), written under the influence of mescaline. Bell's portrait was commenced in 1931. It depicts Huxley on the eve of his emergence as an author of the first rank, and in the midst of his association with the Bloomsbury circle.

National Portrait Gallery, London

London

Title

Aldous Huxley

Date

c.1931

Medium

oil on canvas

Measurements

H 71.1 x W 56 cm

Accession number

6717

Acquisition method

Purchased with help from the Dame Helen Gardner Bequest, 2005

Work type

Painting

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National Portrait Gallery, London

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