Vanessa Bell facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Vanessa Bell
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Portrait of Vanessa Bell (1916)
by Roger Fry |
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| Born |
Vanessa Stephen
30 May 1879 London, England
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| Died | 7 April 1961 (aged 81) Charleston Farmhouse, Sussex, England
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| Alma mater | King's College London |
| Occupation | Painter, interior designer |
| Spouse(s) |
Clive Bell
(m. 1907) |
| Children |
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| Parent(s) | |
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Vanessa Bell (born Vanessa Stephen; 30 May 1879 – 7 April 1961) was an English painter and interior designer. She was a member of the Bloomsbury Group, a famous group of artists and writers. She was also the sister of the well-known writer Virginia Woolf.
Contents
Early Life and Learning
Vanessa Stephen was the older daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Prinsep Duckworth. She grew up with her sister Virginia, and brothers Thoby and Adrian. She also had half-siblings, Laura, George, and Gerald Duckworth. They lived in a house at 22 Hyde Park Gate in London.
Vanessa was taught at home. She learned languages, math, and history. She also took drawing lessons from Ebenezer Cook. Later, she went to Sir Arthur Cope's art school in 1896. In 1901, she continued her painting studies at the Royal Academy.
Her Life and Friends
After her mother died in 1895 and her father in 1904, Vanessa sold their family home. She moved to Bloomsbury with her sister Virginia and brothers Thoby and Adrian. There, they started meeting and spending time with other artists, writers, and thinkers. These friends became known as the Bloomsbury Group.
The Bloomsbury Group often met at Vanessa's house in Gordon Square. Important people who joined these meetings included Lytton Strachey, Maynard Keynes, Leonard Woolf, Roger Fry, and Duncan Grant.
In 1907, Vanessa married Clive Bell. They had two sons, Julian and Quentin. Julian sadly passed away in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. Later, in 1918, Vanessa had a daughter named Angelica with the painter Duncan Grant. Clive Bell raised Angelica as his own child.
Before the First World War started, Vanessa, Clive, Duncan Grant, and Duncan's friend David Garnett moved to the countryside in Sussex. They settled at Charleston Farmhouse near Firle, East Sussex. This farmhouse became a very important place for their art and lives.
At Charleston, Vanessa and Duncan Grant painted a lot. They also worked on art projects for the Omega Workshops, which was a design company started by Roger Fry. Vanessa had her first art show at the Omega Workshops in 1916.
Vanessa Bell passed away on 7 April 1961 at Charleston after a short illness. She was buried in the Firle Parish Churchyard. When Duncan Grant died in 1978, he was buried next to her.
Her Art
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In 1906, Vanessa Bell decided to focus on being an artist. She started the Friday Club to create a better place for painting in London. She was inspired by the Post-Impressionist art shows organized by Roger Fry. She began to use bright colors and bold shapes in her own paintings, similar to the Post-Impressionists. By 1914, she started exploring Abstraction, which uses shapes and colors rather than realistic images.
Vanessa Bell did not follow the traditional Victorian style of painting. She also designed the covers for all of her sister Virginia Woolf's books. These books were published by the Hogarth Press, a company run by Virginia and her husband Leonard Woolf.
Bell is known as one of the most important painters of the Bloomsbury Group. Her art was shown in London and Paris during her lifetime. She is praised for her new ideas in art and for her work in design.
Vanessa Bell's paintings include Studland Beach (1912), The Tub (1918), and Interior with Two Women (1932). She also painted portraits of her sister Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, and David Garnett. Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant also worked together to create murals for Berwick Church in Sussex between 1940 and 1942.
In 1932, Bell and Grant were asked to create a special dinner service for Kenneth Clark. They painted 50 plates with portraits of famous women from history. This collection, called the Famous Women Dinner Service, was shown to the public again in London in early 2018.
Art Shows
In the summer of 1909, Vanessa Bell's painting Iceland Poppies (1908) was shown at the New English Art Club. It was highly praised and showed how much her art had grown.
Designs for a Screen: Figures by a Lake (1912) was a painting influenced by the Nabis artists. It might have been part of an exhibit at the Friday Club in 1912.
In 1916, Bell had her first solo art show at the Omega Workshop in London. This was an important place for new artists and designers. Vanessa Bell had become the director of the Omega Workshop around 1912.
Design for Overmantel Mural (1913) is an oil painting that shows Vanessa Bell and Molly MacCarthy in Bell's art studio.
Street Corner Conversation (also from 1913) shows four people talking among large, geometric shapes.
Summer Camp (1913) shows a summer camp that was set up near Thetford.
By the Estuary (1915) is a landscape painting that shows her love for clear designs and how different colors can work well together.
Nude with Poppies (1916) was a design for a headboard that Bell painted for Mary Hutchinson.
In 1920, she painted a mysterious story-telling painting called “The Party.” It was shown in May 1922 at a big art show in London. The painting was featured and praised in British Vogue magazine in June 1922. It then disappeared for 61 years before being sold.
In 2021, Vanessa Bell was one of four women artists featured in an exhibition at the Laing Gallery in Newcastle.
Portrayals in Movies and Books
Vanessa Bell has been shown in several movies and books:
- She was played by Janet McTeer in the movie Carrington (1995).
- Miranda Richardson played her in the film The Hours (2002).
- She is the main character in the novels Vanessa and Virginia (2010) by Susan Sellers and Vanessa and Her Sister (2014) by Priya Parmar.
- Phoebe Fox and Eve Best played her in the BBC mini-series Life in Squares (2015).
- Emerald Fennell played her in the movie Vita and Virginia (2018).
See also
- List of Bloomsbury Group people
