Vanessa Bell

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For the American actress, see Vanessa Bell Calloway.

Vanessa Bell (May 28, 1879 – April 7, 1961), was an English painter and interior designer and a member of the Bloomsbury group.

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Early life, Bloomsbury Group, marriage and relationships

She was born Vanessa Stephen, a daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen and the elder sister of Virginia, who later became better known as the novelist, Virginia Woolf. After the deaths of their parents, the sisters lived in the Bloomsbury district of London, where they came into contact with those who would become their set. Vanessa studied art under Sir Arthur Cope and, after his death, at the Royal Academy Schools.

In 1907 she married within the Bloomsbury Group with Clive Bell. They had two sons, Julian and Quentin, early in their marriage, but by the First World War both Vanessa and Clive had other sexual partners, most with the full knowledge of one another, but they never divorced. Vanessa later embarked on an affair with the bisexual painter Duncan Grant, with whom she had a daughter, Angelica. Angelica later married Duncan Grant's erstwhile lover David Garnett.

Vanessa, Duncan and Duncan's lover David Garnett moved to the Sussex countryside shortly before the outbreak of the war, a few years later ending up in Charleston, while Duncan and David (as conscientious objectors) had to work on the land to escape being called under arms. Like Duncan Grant, Vanessa contributed to the Omega Workshops established by artist Roger Fry, with whom she also became involved in a sexual affair. After the First World War, she became a member of the London Group.

Vanessa's eldest son Julian died in the Spanish Civil War in 1937.

Throughout her life her relationship with Clive Bell remained amicable, while she formed primarily an artistic tandem with Duncan Grant, painting in the same (or adjacent) studio(s), commenting on each other's works. Although it has often been suggested that she herself was bisexual, and that her sister (Virginia Woolf) had romantic affections for her, it remains open for conjecture and has never been completely confirmed.

Bell was played by Miranda Richardson in the Academy Award winning 2002 film The Hours and by Janet McTeer in Carrington.

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