Vanessa (Stephen) Bell (1879 - 1961)

Born 30 May 1879 in London, England

Ancestors

Wife of Arthur Clive Heward Bell — married 1907 in London, England, United Kingdom

Descendants

Died 7 Apr 1961 at age 81 in Sussex, England

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Biography

Vanessa (Stephen) Bell is Notable.

Vanessa Stephen was the eldest daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Prinsep Duckworth. She attended Sir Arthur Cope's art school in 1896, and then studied painting at the Royal Academy in 1901. She moved to Bloomsbury with her sister, Virginia and brothers Thoby and Adrian, where they met and began socializing with the artists, writers and intellectuals who would come to form the Bloomsbury Group. She married Clive Bell in 1907 and they had two sons, Julian and Quentin. They had an open marriage, and Bell had affairs with art critic Roger Elliot Fry (1866-1934) and with the painter Duncan Grant (1885-1978), with whom she had a daughter, Angelica in 1918. Clive Bell raised Angelica as his own child.

Her paintings include Studland Beach (1912), The Tub (1918), Interior with Two Women (1932), and portraits of Virginia Woolf (three in 1912), Aldous Huxley (1929–1930), and David Garnett (1916). Her first solo exhibition was at the Omega Workshops in 1916.

Sources

• Wikipedia contributors, "Vanessa Bell," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vanessa_Bell&oldid=1137675799 (accessed February 6, 2023).

See also:

• 'Virginia Woolf' a biography by her nephew Quentin Bell, published by The Hogarth Press, Pimlico, London in 1996. ISBN 0 7126 7450 0, includes extensive family trees. Hundreds of friends, professional connections and people in the 'Bloomsbury set' are also mentioned in the text.'Virginia Woolf' a biography by her nephew Quentin Bell