- Quentin Bell
Quentin Claudian Stephen Bell (
19 August 1910 inLondon –16 December 1996 inSussex ) was an English art historian and author.Bell was the son of
Clive Bell andVanessa Bell née Stephen, and the nephew ofVirginia Woolf née Stephen. He was educated inLondon and at the QuakerLeighton Park School .Principally an artist, as a potter, he was drawn to academia. Bell's biography of his famous aunt, "Virginia Woolf: A biography", 2 vols (London: Hogarth Press, 1972), won not only the
James Tait Black Memorial Prize , but also the Duff Cooper Prize and the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award. He also wrote several books on theBloomsbury Group andCharleston Farmhouse .He later became a lecturer in Art History at the Department of Fine Art, King's College, University of Durham (
Newcastle University from 1963) from 1952 to 1959, then professor atLeeds University . In 1964 he was appointed Slade professor of fine art atOxford University and, in 1965, Ferens professor of fine art atHull University . He was a professor of art history and theory at theUniversity of Sussex from 1967 to 1975.He was married to (Anne) Olivier Bell née Popham. They had three children: Julian Bell, an artist and muralist;
Cressida Bell , a notable textile designer; and Virginia Bell, the writer of "Among the Bohemians" and "Singled Out".His older brother was the poet
Julian Heward Bell who died in the Spanish Civil War in 1939, aged 29. The writerAngelica Garnett is his half-sister.Quentin Bell is buried in the churchyard of St. Peter's Church,
West Firle ,East Sussex .
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