bell: a conversation

 
Vanes­sa Bell (1879–1961)
was one of the most dis­tinc­tive and in­no­v­a­tive mod­ern painters in Britain be­fore and dur­ing the First World War.

A Con­ver­sa­tion, 1913–16
is one of her ma­jor achievements,
which she worked on at var­i­ous points over sev­er­al years. 

Bell used bold colours and sim­pli­fied forms to de­pict three women in deep discussion. 

 

The arrange­ment of the fig­ures and the close group­ing of the women’s heads give the gath­er­ing a sense of dra­ma and a con­spir­a­to­r­i­al air.
 

 

The painting’s scale and strong vi­su­al im­pact sug­gests the con­ver­sa­tion is of great sig­nif­i­cance, al­though we are left to imag­ine what is be­ing discussed.
 

 

 

 

Bell was a ma­jor fig­ure among the avant-garde artists and writ­ers known as the Blooms­bury Group.
 

‘The Blooms­bury Group … re­ject­ed op­pres­sive Vic­to­ri­an in­sti­tu­tions and em­braced cre­ative free­dom, sex­u­al per­mis­sive­ness, and athe­ism … Dorothy Park­er fa­mous­ly re­marked that the group ‘lived in squares, paint­ed in cir­cles, and loved in triangles.”
—Demie Kim
 

 

 

‘Bell would in­deed be­come a tal­ent­ed painter, al­though her work has long been over­shad­owed by the life and ac­com­plish­ments of her bril­liant writer sis­ter [Vir­ginia Woolf].’
—Demie Kim
 

 

‘Many of Vir­ginia Woolf’s ear­li­est dust jack­ets were de­signed by her old­er sis­ter … ‘Your style is unique, be­cause so truth­ful,’ Woolf told her when some crit­i­cized the de­signs, ‘and there­fore it up­sets one com­plete­ly.’ Bell de­signed a to­tal of 38 book cov­ers for Hog­a­rth Press, the pub­lish­ing house Woolf found­ed with her husband.’
—Emi­ly Temple
 

 

‘At some point in their child­hoods, the two had fash­ioned Woolf as the writer, Bell the painter. De­spite their at­tempts to de­fine their in­di­vid­ual tal­ents, the sis­ters found much in­spi­ra­tion and ri­val­ry in each other’s work. In­ter­twined in their sep­a­rate crafts and lives was the com­mit­ment to sto­ry­telling – to show life ‘in its essence,’ as Woolf put it.’
—Ha Duong
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

—juli­ja svetlova

Flom­mist Juli­ja Svet­lo­va is an art his­to­ri­an, free­lance re­searcher and a founder of Neja’s Art Walks, a be­spoke provider of art and his­to­ry-re­lat­ed tours and ex­pe­ri­ences in Lon­don. Juli­ja pre­vi­ous­ly worked as a col­lec­tion re­search as­sis­tant at the Tate. Copy­right © 2024 Juli­ja Svetlova.

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