Vanessa Bell
| Vanessa Bell | |
|---|---|
Portrait of Vanessa Bell, 1916
by Roger Fry (1866–1934) |
|
| Born |
Vanessa Stephen 30 May 1879 London |
| Died | 7 April 1961 (aged 81) Charleston Farmhouse, Sussex |
| Occupation | Painter, Interior designer |
| Spouse(s) | Clive Bell (m. 1907–61) |
| Children |
Julian Bell (1908–1937) Quentin Bell (1910–1996) Angelica Garnett (1918–2012) |
Vanessa Bell (née Stephen; 30 May 1879 – 7 April 1961) was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury Group and the sister of Virginia Woolf.
Vanessa Stephen was the eldest daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Prinsep Duckworth. The family, including her sister Virginia; brothers Thoby (1880–1906) and Adrian (1883–1948), and half-brothers, George and Gerald Duckworth, lived at 22 Hyde Park Gate, Westminster, London. She was educated at home in languages, mathematics and history, and took drawing lessons from Ebenezer Cook before she attended 's art school in 1896, and then studied painting at the Royal Academy in 1901.
In later life she alleged that during her childhood she had been sexually molested by her half-brothers, George and Gerald Duckworth.
After the deaths of her mother in 1895 and her father in 1904, Vanessa sold 22 Hyde Park Gate and moved to Bloomsbury with Virginia and brothers Thoby and Adrian, where they met and began socialising with the artists, writers and intellectuals who would come to form the Bloomsbury Group. The Bloomsbury Group's first Thursday evening meetings began at Bell's house in Gordon Square. Attendees included: Lytton Strachey, Desmond McCarthy, and later on, Maynard Keynes, Leonard Woolf, Roger Fry, and Duncan Grant.
She married Clive Bell in 1907 and they had two sons, Julian (who died in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War at the age of 29) and Quentin. The couple had an open marriage, both taking lovers throughout their lives. Bell had affairs with art critic Roger Fry and with the painter Duncan Grant, with whom she had a daughter, Angelica in 1918, whom Clive Bell raised as his own child.
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