An expert’s guide to Vanessa Bell: five must-read books on the Bloomsbury Group artist

A self-portrait (around 1958) by Vanessa Bell Photo: courtesy of Charleston, © estate of Vanessa Bell, DACS 2024
A career survey of the Bloomsbury Group artist Vanessa Bell (1879-1961) will open this month at the Charleston cultural centre in Lewes, southern England. It will feature more than 100 works including a number of objects from private collections that have not been exhibited before. Darren Clarke, who has curated the show and is Charleston’s head of collections and research, has chosen five key books to get to grips with the colourful life and art of Vanessa Bell.
“If Vanessa Bell is an unfamiliar name to you and you are looking for an introduction to her life and work, this new publication is the perfect starting point. Rosalind McKever, the curator of paintings and drawings at the Victoria and Albert Museum, introduces us to Bell with a concise, accessible and engaging text complemented by over 100 illustrations.”
“If you want to know almost every detail of Vanessa Bell’s life and work then read this, the mother of all books on Bell. One of the first serious biographies of a woman artist, it still packs a punch as it explores Bell’s complex and layered life and career in impeccable detail.”
“Wendy Hitchmough’s new work takes a 21st-century approach to Bell’s career—a further reappraisal of her role as one of the influencers of Modernism. The book takes a chronological approach but uses each chapter to explore a different facet of Bell’s work and life. It presents her as a pioneer of female Modernism, an artist with her own agency.”
“This small volume brings together six of Vanessa Bell’s talks, her public voice. Five were written for the Memoir Club, informal evenings that would bring together the friends that made up the Bloomsbury Group. Bloomsbury had a wicked sense of humour, and the speakers were expected to entertain, with plenty of in-jokes and satire.”
“Bloomsbury childhood is at the centre of Angelica Garnett’s memoirs, Vanessa Bell’s daughter. Deceived with Kindness gives an evocative portrait of Garnett’s childhood, full of details, observations and reminiscences. But throughout it, is the recurring narrative of neglect in the freedoms that she was given. Garnett’s brother called into question her account of the past. But it remains a fascinating read and another voice in the history of Bell.”
• Vanessa Bell: A World of Form and Colour, Charleston in Lewes, 26 March-
21 September
New shows at Charleston will celebrate the liberal legacy of the artists and intellectuals who gathered there
A new book and UK exhibition by Charlie Porter explores the sartorial choices of Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell and the rest of the Charleston set

source