Although formally trained as a painter at the Slade School of Art in 1901, it was not until meeting Roger Fry that Vanessa Bell found true artistic inspiration. Following Fry’s first Post-Impressionist exhibition in 1910, Bell wrote ‘Here was a possible path, a sudden liberation and encouragement to feel for oneself, which was absolutely overwhelming’[1].
The circle that was beginning to emerge around Fry would become a corporate venture with the formation of the Omega Workshop in 1913. Bell was named as co-director, alongside Duncan Grant. The pair began a passionate companionship that would remain throughout their lives. Despite its closure in 1919, Omega designs became fashionable over time, keeping works such as Mother and Child in steady demand throughout Bell and Grant’s careers.
In 1916, Bell’s unconventional family moved from London to Charleston House in Sussex, where Bell’s more experimental periods would gradually turn to more private, domestic themes, exemplified here in Shrouded Figure, sketched in the family living room. She remained extremely close to her sister Virginia Woolf, designing numerous book covers for Woolf’s publications. Perhaps the most significant of these is Death of a Moth, drawn shortly after Virginia’s tragic suicide in 1941. The design incorporates the great elm tree at the Woolf’s country retreat, beneath which Virginia’s ashes are buried.
On reflection of her later years, Quentin Bell wrote “Grant’s relationship with Vanessa Bell endured to the end; it became primarily a domestic and creative union, the two artists painting side by side.”