Explore: Vanessa Bell

(1879 - 1961)

Vanessa Bell painted and carried out decorative commissions throughout her life, designing fabrics, cushion covers, book jackets and interiors. Like her sister the writer Virginia Woolf, she belonged to the circle known as the Bloomsbury Group which included Clive Bell, whom she married in 1907. Bell worked for the Omega Workshops, an association of artists/craftsmen active from 1913 to 1919. She was also involved in the decorative work at Charleston Farmhouse near Lewes in Sussex. Now open to the public, this was Bell’s home until her death in 1961. Bell and Grant’s paintings were greatly influenced by exhibitions of Post-Impressionist art in London in 1910 and 1912, in which works by Cézanne, Picasso, Van Gogh and Gauguin were shown.