Vanessa Bell

Infobox Person
name = Vanessa Bell


birth_date = birth date|1879|5|30|df=y
death_date = death date and age|1961|4|7|1879|5|28|df=y
spouse = Clive Bell (1907-1961)
children = Julian Bell (1908-1937)
Quentin Bell (1910-1996)
Angelica Garnett {b.1918)

Vanessa Bell (née Stephen; 30 May 1879 – 7 April 1961), was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury group, and the sister of Virginia Woolf.

Biography and artwork

Vanessa Bell was the eldest daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Prinsep Jackson (1846 - 1895). Her parents lived at 22 Hyde Park Gate, London, and Vanessa lived there until 1904. She was educated at home by her parents in languages, mathematics and history, and took drawing lessons from Ebenzer Cook before she attended Sir Arthur Cope's art school in 1896,and then studied painting at the Royal Academy in 1901.

After the deaths of her mother in 1895 and her father 1904, Vanessa sold 22 Hyde Park Gate and moved to Bloomsbury with her sister Virginia and brothers Thoby (1880 - 1906) and Adrian (1883 - 1948), where they met and began socialising with the artists, writers and intellectuals who would come to form the Bloomsbury Group.

She married Clive Bell in 1911 and they had two sons, Julian (who died in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War at the age of 29), and Quentin . The two had an open marriage, both taking lovers throughout their life together. She had affairs with art critic Roger Fry, and with the painter Duncan Grant, with whom she had a daughter, Angelica in 1918, whom Clive Bell raised as his own daughter. Clive Bell took writer and patron of the arts Mary Hutchinson, amongst others, as his lover. [http://www.tate.org.uk/archivejourneys/bloomsburyhtml/group.htm]

Vanessa, Clive, Duncan Grant and Duncan's lover David Garnett moved to the Sussex countryside shortly before the outbreak of First World War, and settled at Charleston Farmhouse near Firle, East Sussex, where she and Grant painted and worked on commissions for the Omega Workshops established by Roger Fry.

Vanessa Bell's significant 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 (1929-1930), and David Garnett (1916).

She is considered one of the major contributors to British portrait drawing and landscape art in the 20th century.

She is portrayed by British actress Miranda Richardson in the 2002 film "The Hours" alongside Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf, and is also the subject of Susan Sellers' novel "Vanessa and Virginia".

References

*"Sketches in Pen and Ink", Vanessa Bell
*"A Passionate Apprentince: the early journals", Virginia Woolf
*"A Moment's Liberty", Virginia Woolf
*"A Very Close Conspiracy: Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf", Jane Dunn
*"Vanessa Bell", Frances Spalding
*"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
*"Wicked" (Nessarose), Gregory Maguire

External links

* [http://www.charleston.org.uk official site of the Charleston Farmhouse in Sussex]
* [http://www.tate.org.uk/archivejourneys/bloomsburyhtml/group.htm a presentation by the Tate Gallery, including biographies, timeline, pictures etc.]
* [http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/bell_vanessa.html links to Vanessa Bell's works online]
* [http://www.wikitree.org/index.php?title=Vanessa_Bell Wiki-Genealogy]
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