| Vanessa Bell 1879-1961  |
Oldest child of Sir Leslie and Julia
Stephen. Educated at Royal Academy Schools and the Slade School
of Art. After the death of her father in 1904, she, Virginia, Thoby
and Adrian moved to 46 Gordon Square in Bloomsbury, where the sisters
first met and mingled with Thoby's Cambridge friends, and the "Bloomsbury
group" came into being. In 1907 she married Clive Bell, and
they remained spouses and lifelong friends though both conducted
romantic affairs. They had two sons, Julian (1908-1937) and Quentin
(1910-1997). In 1916, she moved to Charleston farm, where she lived
for many years with Duncan Grant, a fellow painter whose aesthetics
harmonized with her own. Vanessa's daughter Angelica (1918-), was
acknowledged as Clive's child, but was in fact Duncan's, though
he was primarily homosexual.
"Today, when we think of her, I expect that we refer
to Marcel Gimond's study of her head. It is a gravely beautiful,
an Olympian head, but neither the sculptor's intention nor his
medium allow us to suppose that it is a head that might be distorted
by laughter or by distress; and yet in thinking of Vanessa I do
see her thus transformed. My elder brother, speaking with unconscious
prescience, likened her to Demeter, a goddess who with terrible
velocity could change from summer to winter. My earliest memories
are of her summer laughter, specifically of an evening seated
on a bench in Gordon Square when she told us how children were
made and born, an account which she made so overwhelmingly droll
that I rolled helpless with mirth off the bench." Links: |
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