Vanessa Bell

The gallery regularly handles, acquires and advises on works by Vanessa Bell. For more information or the availability of work, please contact the gallery.

VANESSA BELL (1879 - 1961)

Vanessa Bell was an artist and designer best known for being a core member of the boundary-defying Bloomsbury Group. Bell was born in London in 1879 into a family of intellectuals - her father was the eminent author and historian Leslie Stephen and her great-aunt was the pioneering photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. In 1896 she studied drawing at Arthur Cope’s School of Art in Kensington continuing on to the Royal Academy Schools where she studied under the tutelage of artists such as John Singer Sargent.

After her father’s death, Vanessa and her siblings moved to 46 Gordon Square in the heart of Bloomsbury. Here, they became part of a burgeoning artistic milieu of artists, writers and critics set on breaking free from the confines of their restrictive Edwardian upbringings. In 1910 Bell married the writer and critic Clive Bell and they had two children Julian and Quentin. In 1912 she exhibited in the Second Post-Impressionist show curated by fellow Bloomsbury Group member Roger Fry. In 1913 Bell became a co-Director of the decorative design cooperative the Omega Workshops alongside Fry and fellow artist Duncan Grant.

In 1916, during World War One Bell moved to Charleston, a farmhouse in Sussex, with her two children, her lover Duncan Grant and his lover David Garnett. Charleston became their home for the next 50 years becoming unmistakable for the irreverent way they decorated the house. It was at Charleston on Christmas Day 1918 Bell and Grant welcomed a daughter, Angelica Bell. 1916 also marked Bell’s first solo exhibition at the Omega Workshops which was followed by another in 1922 at London’s Independent Gallery. The 1930s became a period of great upheaval for Bell when her eldest son Julian died in the Spanish Civil War in 1937. Throughout their lives Bell and Grant took on a many collaborative projects one of the most notable being Berwick Church in Sussex which they were asked to create murals for in 1941 which has become a testament to their unmistakeable style. In 1961 Bell died at Charleston.