Her breakthrough role came in a film which saw three of her co-stars cavort in a scene of ‘frontal, flapping, male nudity’ – as one critic put it – in starkest contrast to her own buttoned-up part which, she feared, typecast her as a virginal English rose.
But this week, nearly 40 years after her appearance in A Room With A View, not one but two images of a naked Helena Bonham Carter went under the hammer at a Suffolk auction house – signed, intriguingly, ‘R Bonham-Carter’.
Both oil paintings measure 16in by 12in. In one, it’s as if the artist were admiring Helena from behind as she peers at her reflection in a dressing room mirror, her cocked left leg resting on a stool. In the other, a full frontal nude, a fur coat tumbles from her shoulders.
Lacy Scott, the auctioneers, catalogued both as by a member of the family who inserts a hyphen in his surname: Rupert Bonham-Carter. But that, it transpires, serves to muddy the waters rather than clarify them.
The man who did so much to establish the Bonham Carter family fortune, Henry Bonham Carter, fathered 13 children, before dying aged 94 in 1921. Among his descendants were Raymond Bonham Carter – Helena’s father – and Raymond’s first cousin, Victor.
This week not one but two images of a naked Helena Bonham Carter went under the hammer at a Suffolk auction house – signed, intriguingly, ‘R Bonham-Carter’
Both oil paintings measure 16in by 12in. In one, it’s as if the artist were admiring Helena from behind as she peers at her reflection in a dressing room mirror, her cocked left leg resting on a stool
Her breakthrough role came in a film which saw three of her co-stars cavort in a scene of ‘frontal, flapping, male nudity’
The latter was the grandfather of a man who is indeed called Rupert Bonham-Carter. But Rupert assures me that he has never painted his cousin Helena. That’s not particularly surprising, given that Rupert – a robust Canadian in his mid-50s – says that he finds fulfilment ‘coaching and refereeing rugby union and pursuing entrepreneurial ventures’.
From Ottawa, he tells me: ‘I am not the artist but had noticed someone using my name. I would doubt that Helena knows about or sat for [either] painting.’
Lacy Scott added a note barely an hour before Thursday’s auction, explaining that the seller ‘[says that] these works were purchased by a deceased family member from the artist’s exhibition in Bloomsbury (date unknown)’.
The ever discreet Helena declines to comment. But perhaps an unfortunate trend is already established. Last year, I disclosed that a canvas of a full frontal male nude had come to light signed ‘Paul Burrell’.
The buyer presumed that Princess Diana’s butler – now a water colourist of animals and landscapes – had embraced another genre, but Burrell assured me that that was not the case.
Still more disquietingly, the signature that appeared on the canvas was almost identical to the one which appears on Burrell’s website…
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