Vanessa Bell

BIOGRAPHY

Vanessa Bell (nee Stephens) was born into a family of artists and intellectuals in late nineteenth century London. Her great-aunt was renowned photographer Julia Margaret Cameron and her mother, Julia Prinsep was a favourite model of the members of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. Following the death of her parents Vanessa, her sister Virginia (later Woolf) and brothers Thoby and Adrian moved to Gordon Square in Bloomsbury. There they formed a circle of artists, writers and intellectuals who held meetings each Thursday. 

Today Bell is the most highly regarded member of this important Modern British art cohort known as the Bloomsbury Group. Other members include Bell's husband art critic Clive Bell, her sister and celebrated writer Virginia Woolf, and artists Duncan Grant and Roger Fry amongst others. During the First World War, Bell and Duncan Grant relocated to Charleston Farm in Sussex where she spent the rest of her life. She and Grant turned the humble farmhouse into an eclectic artistic interior and today the house is open to the public as a museum.

Bell, Roger Fry and Duncan Grant also founded the Omega Workshops in order to break down the barriers between art and design and bring high-quality artist-made furnishings into British homes.