Vanessa Bell, recipient: Duncan Grant

Letter from Vanessa Bell to Duncan Grant

[27 December 1928]

Page 1

Created by
Vanessa Bell 1879–1961
Recipient
Duncan Grant 1885–1978
Date
[27 December 1928]
Show details
Duncan Grant, ‘Page 1’ [27 December 1928]

© The estate of Vanessa Bell courtesy of Henrietta Garnett

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Created by
Vanessa Bell 1879–1961
Recipient
Duncan Grant 1885–1978
Title
Letter from Vanessa Bell to Duncan Grant
Date
[27 December 1928]
Format
Document - correspondence
Collection
Tate Archive
Acquisition
Presented to Tate Archive by Henrietta Garnett, May 2007.
Reference
TGA 20078/1/44/160

Description

Letter from Vanessa Bell, Cleeve House, Seend, Wiltshire, to Duncan Grant. She describes a visit to Lytton Strachey at Ham Spray House, where he shows Bell his new library; she criticises Dora Carrington's decoration elsewhere in the house, in particular a room where two Grant paintings ('Venus and Adonis' [c. 1919; T01514] and 'Still life with Gimond head' [c. 1923]) hang with John Banting's portrait of Alix Strachey. Lytton also discusses the will of Grant's recently deceased aunt Jane. Bell attributes her feeling of oppression at Cleeve House to the constant 'surveillance' of her mother-in-law, and describes a London Group meeting where Bernard Adenay manoeuvred his wife's paintings into the upcoming exhibition despite Bell's poor opinion of them. Also mentions Mr and Mrs Behrens, Clive, Cory, Julian and Quentin Bell, Roger Fry, Heal's, Augustus John and Dorelia McNeill, Henry Lamb, Frances Partridge, Ralph (?Patridge), James, Marjorie and Pippa Strachey, Stephen Tomlin and Julia Strachey, and Virginia Woolf.

Bloomsbury British Surrealism Camden Town Group London Artists’ Association London Group Post-impressionism Surrealism Vorticism

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