Vanessa Bell often visited France which this relatively large picture for the artist, with a brace of pheasants, a bottle and a glass of red wine evokes. However, it could have equally been painted in Charleston at Firle in East Sussex where she lived with her husband the art critic Clive Bell (1881-1964) – who had just published An Account of French Painting (1931) along with her three children, Julian (1908-1937), Quentin (1910-1996) and Angelica (1918-2012) as well with Duncan Grant (1885-1978), her daughter’s biological father, and his lover David Garnett (1892-1981), who later married Bell’s daughter. It was purchased by Sir Kenneth Clark (1903-1983) from Bell's exhibition at Agnew’s in the winter of 1931 who gifted Pheasants (1931), among many of his artworks to the Contemporary Art Society in 1946, who in turn donated it to the Tate.