Thursday 17 March 2011

Vanessa Bell

Vanessa Bell
Frederick and Jessie Etchells Painting  1912

Oil on wood
support: 511 x 530 mm frame: 653 x 678 x 79 mm
painting
TATE




http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=905&searchid=9967


TGA 200611 A Calendar designed by Vanessa Bell, Tate Archive. Copyright Bell Estate/Tate Archive

Today I’ve got something seasonal to show you from the Archive. Artists have a bit of an advantage when it comes to interesting Christmas presents – this is a calendar, hand-painted by Vanessa Bell, from the papers of Helen Anrep and Roger Fry.
Bell and Fry were both members of the Bloomsbury Group, the loose circle of artists and intellectuals living in this area of central London. Vanessa Bell was an artist, Roger Fry was both an artist and a critic, as well as being the man who introduced Post-Impressionist art to England. As well as their influence on art and writing, the Bloomsbury set are also very well known for their entangled personal lives. Vanessa, the sister of Virginia Woolf, was married to Clive Bell, had briefly had an affair with Roger Fry in the 1910s, but had then transferred her affections to Duncan Grant, with whom she lived for the rest of her life. Fry met Helen Anrep in 1924, and she left her husband (the Russian mosaicist Boris Anrep) to live with him until his death in 1934.

http://blog.tate.org.uk/?paged=6