The elder sister of Virginia Woolf, the daughter of the prominent Victorian writer Sir Leslie Stephen, Vanessa Bell was a well-known painter and designer of the early twentith century. She was a central figure of a group of writers and artists known as the Bloomsbury (Link). When she was seventeen, Vanessa began to take drawing classes. She entered the painting school of Royal Academy Schools in 1901.
In 1907, she married Clive Bell, a poet and an art critic who was also a member of the Bloomsbury group. Vanessa first had a love affair with the artist and critic Roger Fry, and later fell in love forever with the talented artist Duncan Grant. Both of these men were also prominent members of the Bloomsbury circle and had a substantial influence on Vanessa's attitude and on her art (Caws 73). Vanessa had three children, Julian and Quentin Bell, and Angeliclia, the daughter by Duncan.
Vanessa was very disappointed and discouraged in her early career as an artist, during which she exhibited in several of her paintings at the New English Art Club and other venues. In addition to the income that she earned from the sale of few paintings, she provided illustrations to many books written by Virgina Woolf and decorated furniture and artifacts for the Omega market(dust jacket Link). She reached the height of her career a several years after Roger Fry's First Post-Impressionist Exhibition in 1910(link), during which she became influenced by French artists like Cezzane and Matisse. Vanessa often painted together with Grant. Therefore, several of their paintings contain the same theme.
In addition to her artistic talent, Vanessa was a good writer, who frequently wrote letters to her sister and other members of Bloomsbury. Even Virginia once wrote to Vanessa saying, "You have a touch in letter writing that is beyond me. (Link).
Although she was still married to Clive Bell, Vanessa lived separately with Duncan and her children at a farmhouse called Charelston. She lived happily there until her death in 1961 due to a heart failure.
Iceland Poppies, 1909
Painted before the Post-Impressionist Exhibit, this painting of Vanessa Bell is marked by an Impressionistic style. The objects in the painting have a definite shape and position. The painting seems to become more realistic as the observer moves inward from the poppies, to the teacup, to the corked bottle, and finally to the top of the chalice. The painting contains no peculiar angle that would catch the observer's eye.
Stutland Beach, 1912
This painting cleary shows the influence of Roger Fry's Post-Impressionist exhibition on Vanessa Bell. Compared to the Iceland Poppies, this painting is 2-dimentional, abstract, and contitues less details. The emphasis of the painting is more on form rather than the subject. Although the title of the painting is Stutland Beach, the observer cannot cleary visualize a beach-setting. In her own reflections of the painting, Vanessa seems to agree with this criticism. She says, "It's really very difficult to paint on the beach. One can't get any composition and one's colour changes completely when one brings it in out of the sun..."(qt. Craw 111).
The painting has a sense of mysteriousness, with its figures turned away from the observer. The observer is quickly drawn into the painting and begans to wonder what is happening. The figures near the corner are distinctly separated from the figures near the tent by a distance and the hats and dark colored clothing in contrast to the lose gown and untied hair of the standing woman are suggestive of class differences. "The mystery of uninterpretable and inexpressible acts and presentations, set at a distance from the observer stresses the gap between understanding and seeing"(Caws 10). Still Life on Corner of a Mantelpiece
Still Life on a Mantelpiece, 1914
This painting shows Vanessa Bell's vivid imagination. The painting is drawn from an odd angle, and the objects on the mantelpiece in conjunction with the white diagnoal stem stand up almost in a piramid. The objects are not detailed to represent anything in particular, instead they simply seem like blocks of geometric shapes placed on top of each other. The light purple background helps the observer visualize the proturding corner of the mantelpiece, and the "bright white in the center of the painting serves as a shock after the yellow and ocher and beige-green and brown tones" (Caws 113).
This same group of objects on the same mantelpiece were later drawn by Duncan in 1914. In his painting, however, the frontview of the mantelpiece was portrayed with a use of dull colors that were not contrasted with a bright color, as in Bell's painting. The object were also less abstract.
During the early 1900's, when most of the men were away fighting in the war, women painters began to gain fame. Vanessa Bell was one of these important women painters of the early twentith century. Her paintings with "explorations in the fresh freedom of color, her 'austere sense of geometric design,'" and extraordinary featureless portraits contributed greatly to the English art revolution from Post-Impressionism to modernism (Caws 114).
Caws, Mary Ann. Women of Bloomsbury. London: Routledge, 1990
Spalding, Frances. Vanessa Bell. London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985
Naylor, Gillian., Ed. Bloomsbury: The Artists, Authors and Designers By Themselves. Great Britian: Octopus Group/Amazon, 1990