Vanessa Bell
Portrait of the Bloomsbury Artist
Published on 16. November 2015
Book
Paperback/Softback
416 pages
978-1-78453-241-3 (ISBN)
Description
Vanessa Bell is central to the history of the Bloomsbury Group, yet until this authorised biography was written, she largely remained a silent and inscrutable figure. Tantalising glimpses of her life appeared mainly in her sister, Virginia Woolf's, letters, diaries and biography. Frances Spalding here draws upon a mass of unpublished documents to reveal Bell's extraordinary achievements in both her art and her life. She recounts in vivid detail how Bell's move into the Bloomsbury Group and her exposure to Paris and the radical art of the Post-Impressionists ran parrallel with an increasingly unorthodox personal life that spun in convoluted threads between her marriage to Clive Bell, her affair with Roger Fry, her friendship with Duncan Grant and relationship with her sister.
Reviews / Votes
Vanessa Bell emerges from Frances Spalding's sensitive and scholarly biography as an unexpectedly formidable figure...the central portrait is full and generous and it rings wonderfully trues' The Times 'a compelling life, one worth telling, unusual in its social and intellectual contrasts, formidable in its cast of characters, poignant in its alternations of happiness and despair' Spectator 'an excellent biography: it could hardly be bettered... she has brought Vanessa Bell back to life...As a chronicle of human entanglements, and of the ways in which they were resolved, it wil have an enduring fascination...Vanessa Bell adds a new and indispensable dimension to our knowledge of Bloomsbury, and it is very much to be welcomed.' John Russell, Times Literary SupplementMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Illustrations
32pp bw plates
Dimensions
Height: 226 mm
Width: 155 mm
Weight
618 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78453-241-3 (9781784532413)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
New editions
Book
12/2018
Tauris Parke
€19.00
Shipment within 3-4 weeks
Person
Frances Spalding is an art historian, critic and biographer, and a leading authority of Bloomsbury. She wrote an introduction to the subject, The Bloomsbury Group, for the National Portrait Gallery's 'Companion' series, and has written biographies of Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, Gwen Raverat and of the poet Stevie Smith, as well as Vanessa Bell. For ten years she edited the Charleston Magazine. Her recent books include John Piper, Myfanwy Piper: Lives in Art and Prunella Clough: Regions Unmapped. She is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Professor of Art History at Newcastle University, and was awarded a CBE in 2005.