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Vanessa Bell (née Stephen; 30 May 1879 – 7 April 1961) was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury Group and the sister of Virginia Woolf (née Stephen).
Later in life, Virginia stated that during their childhood the two of them had been sexually abused by their half-brothers, George and Gerald Duckworth.Dunn, Jane. (1990) A Very Close Conspiracy: Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf. London: Jonathan Cape, pp. 20-21.
In 1907, Vanessa married Clive Bell. They had two sons, Julian Bell (who died in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War at the age of 29) and Quentin Bell. The couple had an open marriage, both taking lovers throughout their lives. Vanessa Bell had intimate relationships with art critic Roger Fry and with the painter Duncan Grant, with whom she had a daughter, Angelica Garnett, in 1918. Clive Bell raised Angelica as his own child. Archive Journeys: Bloomsbury
Vanessa, Clive, Duncan Grant, and Duncan's lover David Garnett moved to the Sussex countryside shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, and settled at Charleston Farmhouse near Firle, East Sussex. John Maynard Keynes was also a close friend and frequent member of the household, until his marriage to Lydia Lopokova, who Vanessa disliked.
At Charleston, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant painted and worked on commissions for the Omega Workshops, established by Roger Fry. Her first solo exhibition was at the Omega Workshops in 1916.Richard Shone. (1999) The Art of Bloomsbury Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell, and Duncan Grant. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 137-138. .
On 7 April 1961, Vanessa Bell died at Charleston after a brief illness, and was buried in the nearby churchyard of St Peter's Church, Firle. When Duncan Grant died in 1978, he was buried next to her. (1997). 9780701134099, Chatto & Windus. ISBN 9780701134099
Bell rejected the examples of Victorian narrative painting and rejected a discourse on the ideal and aberrant qualities of femininity. She also designed book jackets for all of her sister Virginia's books that were published by Virginia and Leonard Woolf's publishing company, the Hogarth Press.
Bell is one of the most celebrated painters of the Bloomsbury group. She exhibited in London and Paris during her lifetime, and has been praised for innovative works and for her contributions to design.
Bell's paintings include Studland Beach (1912), The Tub (1918), Interior with Two Women (1932), and portraits of her sister Virginia Woolf (three in 1912), Aldous Huxley (1929–1930) and David Garnett (1916). Bell also worked with Duncan Grant to create murals for Berwick Church in Sussex (1940–42).
In 1932, Bell and Grant were commissioned to produce a dinner service for Kenneth Clark. With oversight from Kenneth's wife Jane Clark, they produced the Famous Women Dinner Service: 50 plates painted with portraits of notable women throughout history. The collection eventually passed on to a private collector, and passed out of public view until 2017. The full collection was exhibited in London in early 2018.
Designs for a Screen: Figures by a Lake (1912), gouache on board, was influenced by Les Nabis paintings by Édouard Vuillard and Maurice Denis and might have been a part of Bell's exhibit Design for Screen, which was shown at the Friday Club Exhibition in February 1912.Shone, Richard. The Art of Bloomsbury. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1999.
In 1916, Bell's first solo exhibition was held in the Omega Workshop in London, a prominent place for exhibitions which supported young artists and introduced design work to the public. Bell had become a co-director of the Omega Workshop in 1913. (1983). 9780297781622, Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 9780297781622
Design for Overmantel Mural (1913), oil on paper, depicts herself and Molly MacCarthy naked in Bell's studio at 46 Gordon Square.
Street Corner Conversation (also created in 1913) features four individuals in conversation amidst massive geometrical forms.
Summer Camp (1913), oil on board, illustrates a summer camp organized at Brandon on the Norfolk-Suffolk border near Thetford.
By the Estuary (1915), oil on canvas, is a modestly scaled landscape showing her fondness for clarity of design in which segments of contrasting color harmonize.
Nude with Poppies (1916), oil on canvas, is a preliminary design for a headboard which Bell painted for Mary Hutchinson.
In 1920, she painted a mysterious, narrative painting, “The Party,” which she exhibited in May 1922 at the prestigious London Group Exhibition but was “not for sale.” The painting was prominently illustrated and praised in British Vogue, June 1922, but then disappeared for 61 years until sold by the Anthony d’Offay Gallery from the estate of Virginia Woolf with the title of “Mrs. Dalloway’s Party.” It is unknown who retitled it, and Woolf’s novel, Mrs Dalloway, was not published until 1925. Bell created the cover art for the first edition dust jacket of that novel.
In 1937 her work was exhibited at the Les femmes artistes d'Europe exhibition in Paris, the first French exhibition to be devoted solely to the work of women.
In 2021, Bell was one of four featured women artists at an exhibition at the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle. Bell's work was included in the 2021 exhibition Women in Abstraction at the Centre Pompidou. (2026). 9780500094372, Thames & Hudson Ltd. ; Thames & Hudson Inc. ISBN 9780500094372
A 2024–2025 exhibition at the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, Vanessa Bell: A World of Form and Colour, claimed to her largest-ever solo show. It included the Famous Women Dinner Service, a series of plates hand-painted by Bell and Duncan Grant depicting prominent women, and one man (Grant himself).
Several of Bell's works, including a self-portrait, a portrait of Virginia Woolf, several dust jackets and ten of The Famous Women Dinner Service were included in the Clark Art Institute's 2025 exhibit A Room of Her Own: Women Artists-Activists in Britain, 1875-1945.
Bell is the subject of the Susan Sellers novel Vanessa and Virginia (2010) and of the Priya Parmar novel Vanessa and Her Sister (2014). She was portrayed by Phoebe Fox and Eve Best in the BBC mini-series Life in Squares (2015).
Bell was portrayed by Emerald Fennell in the film Vita & Virginia (2018).
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