Vanessa Bell’s Art and Her Tangled Bloomsbury Group Relationships
Our next Study Day, Vanessa Bell’s Art and Her Tangled Bloomsbury Group Relationships, will be held on Wednesday 27 November 2024 at Fylde Rugby Club. The lecturer will be Ray Warburton. Ray first visited us a couple of years ago when he gave a lecture on British Art Today.
Vanessa Bell was a founding and leading member of the Bloomsbury Group. Over her lifetime, she produced some of the most important art of the 20th century. Despite her artistic achievements, and despite being the ‘matriarch’ of the Bloomsbury Group, her art and biography are often overshadowed by the international renown of Roger Fry (her lover), by the cutting-edge art theory of Clive Bell (her husband), by the paintings of Duncan Grant (her soul mate) and by the books of Virginia Woolf (her sister).
The lectures will place Vanessa Bell’s paintings – which travelled from gentle impressionism to avant-garde abstraction to a celebration of 19th century European masters – within the context of both her own appreciation of modern art and the tangled web of her relationships, including the setbacks she endured in later life. The Study Day will aim to leave you with a sense of a life well lived, but according to her own rules, and a body of work that is sometimes abstract and sometimes deeply personal. One of her key friendships was with her sister, and the lecture will give a good account of how that ebbed and flowed over the course of their lives.
The Study Day will comprise two lectures. The first lecture traces her early years, and end with the impact of World War One on the Bloomsbury Group and her move to Charleson in 1916. The second lecture continues where the first lecture left off, and traces her mature years, and the fate of the leading Bloomsbury Group members, including her sister and son.
Programme for the Day
- 10:30 Coffee / tea on arrival
- 11:00 First Lecture – Vanessa Bell’s early years
- 12:30 Lunch
- 14:00 Second Lecture – Her mature years
- 15:00 – 15:15 Questions
Cost: Members £39 pp; £43 pp for non-members. Includes two lectures, coffee and two-course lunch.
A booking form will be made available very soon. Places can be reserved at the September, October and November 2024 lectures.
