Vanessa Bell (née Stephen; 30 May 1879 – 7 April 1961) was an English painter and

interior designer Interior design is the art and science of enhancing the interior of a building to achieve a healthier and more aesthetically pleasing environment for the people using the space. An interior designer is someone who plans, researches, coordi ...

, a member of the

Bloomsbury Group The Bloomsbury Group—or Bloomsbury Set—was a group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the first half of the 20th century, including Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster and Lytton St ...

and the sister of

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born ...

(née Stephen).

Early life and education

Vanessa Stephen was the elder daughter of Sir

Leslie Stephen Sir Leslie Stephen (28 November 1832 – 22 February 1904) was an English author, critic, historian, biographer, and mountaineer, and the father of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. Life Sir Leslie Stephen came from a distinguished intellect ...

and Julia Prinsep Duckworth. The family included her sister

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are ...

, brothers Thoby (1880–1906) and

Adrian Adrian is a form of the Latin given name Adrianus or Hadrianus. Its ultimate origin is most likely via the former river Adria from the Venetic and Illyrian word ''adur'', meaning "sea" or "water". The Adria was until the 8th century BC the mai ...

(1883–1948), half-sister Laura (1870-1945) whose mother was Harriett Thackeray and half-brothers George and Gerald Duckworth; they lived at 22 Hyde Park Gate,

Westminster Westminster is an area of Central London, part of the wider City of Westminster. The area, which extends from the River Thames to Oxford Street, has many visitor attractions and historic landmarks, including the Palace of Westminster, B ...

, London. She was educated at home in languages, mathematics and history, and took drawing lessons from Ebenezer Cook before she attended Sir Arthur Cope's art school in 1896. She then studied painting at the

Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its pur ...

in 1901. Later in life, she said that during her childhood she had been sexually abused by her half-brothers, George and Gerald Duckworth.

Personal life

After the deaths of her mother in 1895 and her father in 1904, Vanessa sold 22 Hyde Park Gate and moved to

Bloomsbury Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London. It is considered a fashionable residential area, and is the location of numerous cultural, intellectual, and educational institutions. Bloomsbury is home of the British Museum, the largest ...

with

and brothers Thoby and Adrian, where they met and began socialising with the artists, writers and intellectuals who would come to form the

. The Bloomsbury Group's first Thursday evening meetings began at Bell's house in

Gordon Square Gordon Square is a public park square in Bloomsbury, London, England. It is part of the Bedford Estate and was designed as one of a pair with the nearby Tavistock Square. It is owned by the University of London. History and buildings The ...

. Attendees included:

Lytton Strachey Giles Lytton Strachey (; 1 March 1880 – 21 January 1932) was an English writer and critic. A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of '' Eminent Victorians'', he established a new form of biography in which psychological insight ...

, Desmond MacCarthy and, later on, Maynard Keynes,

Leonard Woolf Leonard Sidney Woolf (; – ) was a British political theorist, author, publisher, and civil servant. He was married to author Virginia Woolf. As a member of the Labour Party and the Fabian Society, Woolf was an avid publisher of his own wo ...

, Roger Fry, and

Duncan Grant Duncan James Corrowr Grant (21 January 1885 – 8 May 1978) was a British painter and designer of textiles, pottery, theatre sets and costumes. He was a member of the Bloomsbury Group. His father was Bartle Grant, a "poverty-stricken" major i ...

. In 1907, Vanessa married

Clive Bell Arthur Clive Heward Bell (16 September 1881 – 17 September 1964) was an English art critic, associated with formalism and the Bloomsbury Group. He developed the art theory known as significant form. Biography Origins Bell was born in East S ...

. They had two sons, Julian (who died in 1937 during the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlism, Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebeli ...

at the age of 29) and

Quentin Quentin is a French male given name from the Latin first name ''Quintinus'', diminutive form of '' Quintus'', that means "the fifth".Albert Dauzat, ''Noms et prénoms de France'', Librairie Larousse 1980, édition revue et commentée par Marie-T ...

. The couple had an

open marriage Open marriage is a form of non-monogamy in which the partners of a dyadic marriage agree that each may engage in extramarital sexual relationships, without this being regarded by them as infidelity, and consider or establish an open relatio ...

, both taking lovers throughout their lives. Bell had affairs with art critic Roger Fry and with the painter

, with whom she had a daughter,

Angelica ''Angelica'' is a genus of about 60 species of tall biennial and perennial herbs in the family Apiaceae, native to temperate and subarctic regions of the Northern Hemisphere, reaching as far north as Iceland, Lapland, and Greenland. They gr ...

in 1918, whom Clive Bell raised as his own child. Vanessa, Clive, Duncan Grant, and Duncan's lover

David Garnett David Garnett (9 March 1892 – 17 February 1981) was an English writer and publisher. As a child, he had a cloak made of rabbit skin and thus received the nickname "Bunny", by which he was known to friends and intimates all his life. Early ...

moved to the

Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the Englis ...

countryside shortly before the outbreak of the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

, and settled at

Charleston Farmhouse Charleston, in East Sussex, is a property associated with the Bloomsbury group, that is open to the public. It was the country home of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant and is an example of their decorative style within a domestic context, represen ...

near

Firle Firle (; Sussex dialect: ''Furrel'' ) is a village and civil parish in the Lewes district of East Sussex, England. Firle refers to an old-English/Anglo-Saxon word ''fierol'' meaning overgrown with oak. Although the original division of East ...

, East Sussex.

John Maynard Keynes John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, ( ; 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was an English economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originally trained in ...

was also a close friend and frequent member of the household, until his relationship with

Lydia Lopokova Lydia Lopokova, Baroness Keynes (born Lidia Vasilyevna Lopukhova, russian: Лидия Васильевна Лопухова; 21 October 1891 – 8 June 1981) was a Russian ballerina famous during the early 20th century. Lopokova trained at the ...

, whom Bell disliked. At Charleston, Bell and Grant painted and worked on commissions for the

Omega Workshops The Omega Workshops Ltd. was a design enterprise founded by members of the Bloomsbury Group and established in July 1913. Shone, Richard. (1999) ''The Art of Bloomsbury: Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant''. Princeton: Princeton University ...

, established by Roger Fry. Her first solo exhibition was at the Omega Workshops in 1916. Shone, Richard. (1999) ''The Art of Bloomsbury Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell, and Duncan Grant''. Princeton:

Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial ...

, pp. 137-138. . On 7 April 1961, Bell died from a brief illness at Charleston, Firle and was buried in the Firle Parish Churchyard. When Duncan Grant died in 1978, he was buried next to her.

Art

In 1906, when Bell started to think of herself as an artist, she formed the Friday Club to create a place in London that was more favourable to painting.Frances Spalding
"Bell, Vanessa"
Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 21 February 2015. Vanessa was encouraged by the

Post-Impressionist Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction ag ...

exhibitions organised by Roger Fry, and she copied their bright colours and bold

form Form is the shape, visual appearance, or configuration of an object. In a wider sense, the form is the way something happens. Form also refers to: *Form (document), a document (printed or electronic) with spaces in which to write or enter data * ...

s in her artworks. In 1914, she turned to

Abstraction Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process wherein general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ("real" or " concrete") signifiers, first principles, or other methods. "An abst ...

. Bell rejected the examples of Victorian narrative painting and rejected a discourse on the ideal and aberrant qualities of femininity. She also designed book jackets for all of her sister Virginia's books that were published by Virginia and Leonard Woolf's publishing company, the

Hogarth Press The Hogarth Press is a book publishing imprint of Penguin Random House that was founded as an independent company in 1917 by British authors Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf. It was named after their house in Richmond (then in Surrey and n ...

. Bell is one of the most celebrated painters of the Bloomsbury group. She exhibited in London and Paris during her lifetime, and has been praised for innovative works and for her contributions to design. Bell's paintings include ''Studland Beach'' (1912), ''The Tub'' (1918), ''Interior with Two Women'' (1932), and portraits of her sister Virginia Woolf (three in 1912),

Aldous Huxley Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books, both novels and non-fiction works, as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems. Born into the prominent Huxle ...

(1929–1930) and

(1916). Bell also worked with Duncan Grant to creat
murals for Berwick Church
in Sussex (1940–42). In 1932, Bell and Grant were commissioned to produce a dinner service for

Kenneth Clark Kenneth Mackenzie Clark, Baron Clark (13 July 1903 – 21 May 1983) was a British art historian, museum director, and broadcaster. After running two important art galleries in the 1930s and 1940s, he came to wider public notice on television ...

. With oversight from Kenneth's wife Jane Clark, they produced the Famous Women Dinner Service: 50 plates painted with portraits of notable women throughout history. The collection eventually passed on to a private collector, and passed out of public view until 2017. The full collection was exhibited in London in early 2018.

Exhibitions

In the summer of 1909, ''Iceland Poppies'' (1908) was exhibited at the New English Art Club. It was praised by

Walter Sickert Walter Richard Sickert (31 May 1860 – 22 January 1942) was a German-born British painter and printmaker who was a member of the Camden Town Group of Post-Impressionist artists in early 20th-century London. He was an important influence on d ...

and marks Bell's artistic maturity. ''Designs for a Screen: Figures by a Lake'' (1912), gouache on board, was influenced by

Nabis Nabis ( grc-gre, Νάβις) was the last king of independent Sparta. He was probably a member of the Heracleidae, and he ruled from 207 BC to 192 BC, during the years of the First and Second Macedonian Wars and the eponymous " War against Nab ...

paintings by

Édouard Vuillard Jean-Édouard Vuillard (; 11 November 186821 June 1940) was a French painter, decorative artist and printmaker. From 1891 through 1900, he was a prominent member of the Nabis, making paintings which assembled areas of pure color, and interior sc ...

and

Maurice Denis Maurice Denis (; 25 November 1870 – 13 November 1943) was a French painter, decorative artist, and writer. An important figure in the transitional period between impressionism and modern art, he is associated with ''Les Nabis'', symbolism, a ...

and might have been a part of Bell's exhibit Design for Screen, which was shown at the Friday Club Exhibition in February 1912. In 1916, Bell's first solo exhibition was held in the Omega Workshop in London, a prominent place for exhibitions which supported young artists and introduced design work to the public. Bell had become the director of the Omega Workshop around 1912. ''Design for Overmantel Mural'' (1913), oil on paper, depicts herself and

Molly MacCarthy Mary, Lady MacCarthy (August 1882 – 29 December 1953) was a British writer; known for her involvement in the "Bloomsbury Group", and commonly called Molly. She was born Mary Warre-Cornish in Lynton, Devon; the daughter of schoolmaster and m ...

naked in Bell's studio at 46 Gordon Square. ''Street Corner Conversation'' (also created in 1913) features four individuals in conversation amidst massive geometrical forms. ''Summer Camp'' (1913), oil on board, illustrates a summer camp organized at Brandon on the Norfolk-Suffolk border near

Thetford Thetford is a market town and civil parish in the Breckland District of Norfolk, England. It is on the A11 road between Norwich and London, just east of Thetford Forest. The civil parish, covering an area of , in 2015 had a population of 24, ...

. ''By the Estuary'' (1915), oil on canvas, is a modestly scaled landscape showing her fondness for clarity of design in which segments of contrasting color harmonize. ''Nude with Poppies'' (1916), oil on canvas, is a preliminary design for a headboard which Bell painted for Mary Hutchinson. In 2021, Bell was one of four featured women artists at an exhibition at the Laing Gallery, Newcastle.

Media portrayal

Bell was portrayed by

Janet McTeer Janet McTeer (born 5 August 1961"Ms Janet McTeer, OBE"
. ''Derbrett's P ...

in the

Dora Carrington Dora de Houghton Carrington (29 March 1893 – 11 March 1932), known generally as Carrington, was an English painter and decorative artist, remembered in part for her association with members of the Bloomsbury Group, especially the writer Lytton ...

biopic '' Carrington'' (1995), and by

Miranda Richardson Miranda Jane Richardson (born 3 March 1958) is an English actress. She made her film debut playing Ruth Ellis in '' Dance with a Stranger'' (1985) and went on to receive Academy Award nominations for '' Damage'' (1992) and ''Tom & Viv'' (1994). ...

in the film '' The Hours'' (2002). Bell is the subject of the Susan Sellers novel ''Vanessa and Virginia'' (2010) and of the Priya Parmar novel ''Vanessa and Her Sister'' (2014). She was portrayed by

Phoebe Fox Phoebe Fox (born 16 April 1987) is an English actress, who was nominated for Olivier and Evening Standard awards for work in theatre. She has appeared in the ''Black Mirror'' episode "The Entire History of You" (2011), '' The Woman in Black: An ...

and

Eve Best Emily "Eve" Best (born 31 July 1971) is an English actress and director. She is known for her television roles as Dr. Eleanor O'Hara in the Showtime series ''Nurse Jackie'' (2009–13), First Lady Dolley Madison in the ''American Experience'' ...

in the BBC mini-series '' Life in Squares'' (2015). Bell was portrayed by

Emerald Fennell Emerald Lilly Fennell (; born 1 October 1985) is an English actress, filmmaker, and writer. She has received many awards and nominations, including an Academy Award, two British Academy Film Awards, one Screen Actors Guild Award, and nominatio ...

in the film ''

Vita and Virginia ''Vita & Virginia'' is a 2018 biographical romantic drama film directed by Chanya Button. The screenplay, written by Button and Eileen Atkins, is adapted from the 1992 play ''Vita & Virginia'' by Atkins. The film stars Gemma Arterton, Eliza ...

'' (2018).https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5859882/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

References

Bibliography

* * * ''Sketches in Pen and Ink'', Vanessa Bell * ''A Passionate Apprentice: the early journals'', Virginia Woolf * ''A Moment's Liberty'', Virginia Woolf * ''A Very Close Conspiracy: Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf'', Jane Dunn * ''Duncan Grant'', Frances Spalding * ''Deceived with Kindness: a Bloomsbury Childhood'', Angelica Garnett * ''Elders and Betters'', Quentin Bell * ''Vanessa and Virginia'', Susan Sellers (fictional biography) * ''Charleston'', Quentin Bell and Virginia Nicholson * ''Virginia Woolf'', Hermione Lee * ''Vanessa and Her Sister'', Priya Parmar (novel)

External links

*
Official site of the Charleston Farmhouse in Sussex

* ttp://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/bell_vanessa.html Links to Vanessa Bell's works online* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Bell, Vanessa 1879 births 1961 deaths 20th-century English women artists Alumni of King's College London Bloomsbury Group English women painters English interior designers Stephen-Bell family Virginia Woolf People from Westminster People from Firle