Duncan Grant

Duncan Grant (1885 - 1978)

Duncan Grant was born in 1885 in Inverness-shire, Scotland. Grant was a Post-Impressionist painter and designer best known for his bold use of colour and form and being a central figure in the Bloomsbury Group. He was born into a military family, his father was a Major in the British army with postings in India and Burma. Grant went on to study at Westminster School of Art between 1902-1907. In 1906 Grant travelled in Italy and France where he studied under the tutelage of Jacques-Èmile Blanche. In 1909, Grant moved to Fitzroy Square on the outskirts of Bloomsbury which was becoming a meeting point for artists, critics and writers. He shared the flat with cousin and lover John Maynard Keynes and through this relationship was introduced to Virginia Stephen (later Woolf) and Vanessa Bell, among others. 

In 1911 he joined the controversial and equally prestigious Camden Town Group and a year later, exhibited works in the now famous Second Post-Impressionist exhibition, curated by Roger Fry, next to works by Paul Gaugin, Vincent Van Gogh and Henri Matisse. In 1913, alongside Fry and Bell, Grant was a co-Director of the design cooperative the Omega Workshops. In 1914, at the outbreak of the First World War, Grant became a conscientious objector moving with his two lovers, Vanessa Bell and David Garnett, to Suffolk and later to the farmhouse Charleston in Sussex which is now characterised by its bold, hand-painted interior worked by both artists. Throughout his long career Grant was a member of a wide range of artistic groups such as the Grafton Group, the New English Art Club and the Vorticists, led by Percy Wyndham Lewis. He had his first solo show in 1920 held at the Carfax Gallery and went on to represent Great Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1926 and 1932. In the 1940s and early 1950s work by the Bloomsbury Group fell out of popularity. However, in the 1960s Grant’s work gained a new surge of interest which resulted in a retrospective of his work held at the Tate Gallery in 1964 and two solo shows at the Anthony d’Offay Gallery in 1972 and 1975.

After living alone at Charleston for many years, Grant moved in with his close friend and long-time friend Paul Roche in Almaston where he died in 1978.