Vanessa Bell : The Life and Art of a Bloomsbury Radical

One of Britain’s most radical and influential artists working in the first decades of the twentieth century, Vanessa Bell was a pioneer for professional women

Vanessa Bell was a leading figure within the Bloomsbury Group and known for her unconventional lifestyle, but her work as a painter, designer, and decorator has often been overlooked and relegated within the bombastic, male-dominated field of British modernism.

With new research, including previously unpublished letters, Wendy Hitchmough explores the ways in which Bell (1879–1961) forged new pathways as a modernist woman. Writing openly about depression and mental health at a time when the subject was stigmatised, as well as challenging taboos surrounding women’s bodies, Bell exploited the patriarchal society that oppressed her. She responded to the nudes and pastoral scenes of Cézanne, Gauguin, Picasso, and Matisse with themes of miscarriage and motherhood. She exhibited with her partner, Duncan Grant, and comparisons between their parallel careers highlight the gender disparities that shaped her life and work.