Vanessa Bell
Born - London, England 1879
Died – Charleston, England 1961
Vanessa Bell was a student at the Royal Academy between 1901 and 1904, where she was taught by John Singer Sargent. She became part of the intellectual circle known as the Bloomsbury Group, which included her sister, the writer Virginia Woolf, her husband Clive Bell and fellow artist Duncan Grant. Bell left her husband for Grant and the pair then settled at Charleston in East Sussex. This old country house is full of paintings and decorations by the couple. Both artists were called upon by Roger Fry to design and decorate furniture, fabric and pottery for the Omega Workshops. Vanessa Bell was overwhelmed by the seminal Post-Impressionist exhibition of 1910, remarking that it was as if, “one might say things one had always felt instead of trying to say things that other people told one to feel.” Her work developed a Post-Impressionist style between 1912 and 1918, making for a new informality in her portraits and using arbitrary configurations as the basis for her large paintings. The Tub is a simplified, unusual and striking composition which has a monumentality due to the use of an upright, near life-size figure.
Masterpieces:
- A Conversation
- Mrs St John Hutchinson
Text: The A-Z of Art, Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson.
Books About vanessa bell
Vanessa Bell
Frances Spalding
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The Art of Bloomsbury: Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell, and Duncan Grant
Richard Shone
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Charleston: A Bloomsbury House and Garden
Quentin Bell
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