2/8/2017 Vanessa Bell: stepping out of the shadows of the Bloomsbury set | Art and design | The Guardian

Vanessa Bell: stepping out of the shadows of the

Bloomsbury set
The artist, best known for her tangled love life and being Virginia Woolfs sister, gets her rst major solo
show

A detail from a self portrait by Bell. Photograph: Richard Caspole/The estate of Vanessa Bell, courtesy of Henrietta Garnett

Maev Kennedy
Tuesday 7 February 2017 11.16GMT

T he rst major solo exhibition devoted to the work of Vanessa Bell, the artist who created
the country retreat for the Bloomsbury set and in the process almost buried her own
reputation, opens this week at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London.

Were not rescuing her from the Bloomsburies, that would be absurd, they were such an
important part of her life but we are letting her be seen in her own light, as the distinctive,
important painter she was. Its a long overdue tribute, co-curator Ian Dejardin said.

The exhibition covers her long career as an artist, from student works in 1905 to her last self-
portraits before her death in 1961, and includes many pictures that have spent decades in
storage, and others that have always been in private collections.

Of the many works we have borrowed from the Tate, only the one of Studland beach is
regularly on the walls, the rest were all in storage, Dejardin said. We had lots of the family in
for an early look there are scores of them, all ravishingly beautiful, its in the genes and they
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were running from wall to wall remarking on how many of the pictures theyd never seen
before.

On the Steps of Santa Maria Salute, Venice, painted in 1948, has

been in a private collection. Photograph: Matthew Hollow/The
estate of Vanessa Bell, courtesy of Henrietta Garnett

The exhibition includes several tender portraits of her sister Virginia Woolf, and inevitably the
tangled love aairs of the Bloomsbury set gure prominently, including portraits of her lovers.
One shows the artist Duncan Grant reected in a mirror: he said he realised she was in love
with him when he noticed her staring at him as he shaved.

They shared Charleston farmhouse in East Sussex happily for decades and had a child, even
though he was gay and a former lover of Bells brother Adrian. Their child, Angelica, went on to
marry David Garnett, another of Grants lovers.

Detail from a portrait of Virginia Woolf. Photograph: National

Portrait Gallery London/The estate of Vanessa Bell, courtesy of
Henrietta Garnett

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There is a baleful portrait of her husband Clive Bells lover Mary Hutchinson, a cousin of the
writer Lytton Strachey, and more surprisingly a reclining nude overshadowed by giant poppies,
which she painted as a bed-head for Hutchinson. Either a supremely open-minded gesture or
a sardonic jab at the lady in question, said Dejardin and his co-curator Sarah Milroy.

The Nude with Poppies she created for her husbands lover.
Photograph: The estate of Vanessa Bell, courtesy of Henrietta
Garnett

The exhibition also marks Dejardins farewell to the gallery which was designed by Sir John
Soane and celebrates its 200th anniversary this year as the rst purpose-built public gallery in
Britain. Dejardin has worked there for 19 years and run it for 12. He is leaving on Friday, with
his partner Eric Pearson who designed the exhibition, and takes over in April as director of the
McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Ontario.

Its a week of very mixed emotions, he said. Im looking forward very much to the new job,
but it will be almost unbearable to leave here Dulwich is an extraordinary place.

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