Skip navigation

Main menu

  • What's on
  • Art & Artists
    • The Collection
      Artists
      Artworks
      Art by theme
      Media
      Videos
      Podcasts
      Short articles
      Learning
      Schools
      Art Terms
      Tate Research
      Art Making
      Create like an artist
      Kids art activities
      Tate Draw game
  • Visit
  • Shop
Become a Member
  • DISCOVER ART
  • ARTISTS A-Z
  • ARTWORK SEARCH
  • ART BY THEME
  • VIDEOS
  • ART TERMS
  • SCHOOLS
  • TATE KIDS
  • RESEARCH
  • Tate Britain
    Tate Britain Free admission
  • Tate Modern
    Tate Modern Free admission
  • Tate Liverpool + RIBA North
    Tate Liverpool + RIBA North Free admission
  • Tate St Ives
    Tate St Ives Ticket or membership card required
  • FAMILIES
  • ACCESSIBILITY
  • SCHOOLS
  • PRIVATE TOURS
Tate Logo
Become a Member
  • Art and Artists
  • Tate Archive
  • Collections of Digitised Archive Items
  • Personal papers of Duncan Grant
  • Correspondence
  • Letters from Vanessa Bell to Duncan Grant

Personal papers of Duncan Grant

1853–1978

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Email
  • Pinterest

Available online are the letters Grant received from Vanessa Bell

Details of the remainder of this collection can be found on the archive catalogue.

Collection Owner
Duncan Grant 1885–1978
Collection
Tate Archive
Acquisition
Presented to Tate Archive by Henrietta Garnett, May 2007.
Reference
TGA 20078

234 objects in this collection

  • Personal papers of Duncan Grant

    234 Objects

    • Correspondence

      234 Objects

      • Letters from Vanessa Bell to Duncan Grant

        234 Objects

Title
Letters from Vanessa Bell to Duncan Grant
Date
[c.1909–57]
Description
Letters from Vanessa Bell, née Stephen, to Duncan Grant, covering much of the artists' relationship over half a century and their interaction with friends and family.

Recurring themes include :
- Bell's family, including husband, art critic Clive Bell, sons Julian and Quentin, and siblings Adrian Stephen, a psychoanalyst and Virginia Woolf, one of the key modernist writers;
- Bell's involvement with the Bloomsbury Group and other cultural figures, such as Russian mosaic artist Boris Anrep; painters Dora Carrington and Matthew Smith; the art critic, curator and painter Roger Fry (with whom Bell had an affair), his mistress Helen Anrep and sister Margery; the French theatre director Jacques Copeau, for whom Grant designed several productions; the modernist artists André Derain, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, whose Paris studios Bell visited with Fry; her friend Faith Henderson; the artist Barbara Hiles (Bagenal); Clive's mistress Mary Hutchinson; economist John Maynard Keynes and his wife, the Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova; critic Desmond MacCarthy and his writer wife Molly; socialite and patron Ottoline Morrell; critic Raymond Mortimer; mathematician H.S. 'Harry' Norton; classicist John Tresidder Sheppard; Grant's Strachey cousins, psychoanalyst James, and writers Dorothy (wife of French painter Simon Bussy), Lytton and Marjorie; civil servant Sydney Saxon-Turner; sculptor Stephen Tomlin; and Leonard Woolf, Virginia's husband and with her founder of the Hogarth Press;
- her artistic collaborations with Duncan Grant and others, most notably their directorship of Roger Fry's Omega Workshops (1913-1919), their decorative schemes for Keynes at King's College, Cambridge (1920-1921), Mary Hutchinson's house in Regent's Park (1925), Ethel Sands' Château d'Auppegard (1927), Dorothy Wellesley's Penns-in-the-woods (1929-1931), the ocean liner 'Queen Mary' (1935), and Berwick Church (1941-1943);
- Bell's own work, its production and display in solo and group exhibitions with organisations such as the Friday Club, the Grafton Group, the London Group, the London Artists' Association, and the Society of Mural Painters;
- her experiences during two world wars : her ménage à trois with Grant and David 'Bunny' Garnett during the First World War, leading to the lease of Charleston Farmhouse, Firle, East Sussex, where Bell and Grant would be based for the rest of their lives, and the birth of her daughter with Grant, Angelica, later to marry Bunny; and
- her difficulties with servants, most notably Mrs Brereton, Nellie Brittain, Louie Dunnet, Grace Germany, and the Selwood sisters, Flossie, Mabel and Trissie.

File includes two letters to Grant from Bunny Garnett, written when Vanessa was in labour with Angelica (December 1918), and a letter to Grant from Claude Rogers (November 1949).
Reference
TGA 20078/1/44

Showing 1–20 of 234 objects

Letter from Vanessa Bell to Duncan Grant

Vanessa Bell, recipient: Duncan Grant
[c.3 November 1909]
View by appointment

Letter from Vanessa Bell to Duncan Grant

Vanessa Bell, recipient: Duncan Grant
6 March [1910]
View by appointment

Letter from Vanessa Bell to Duncan Grant

Vanessa Bell, recipient: Duncan Grant
24 June [1910]
View by appointment

Letter from Vanessa Bell to Duncan Grant

Vanessa Bell, recipient: Duncan Grant
[c.7 September 1911]
View by appointment

Letter from Vanessa Bell to Duncan Grant

Vanessa Bell, recipient: Duncan Grant
[c.27 September 1911]
View by appointment

Letter from Vanessa Bell to Duncan Grant

Vanessa Bell, recipient: Duncan Grant
[c.1911]
View by appointment

Postcard from Vanessa Bell to Duncan Grant

Vanessa Bell, recipient: Duncan Grant
[2 May 1912]
View by appointment

Letter from Vanessa Bell to Duncan Grant

Vanessa Bell, recipient: Duncan Grant
[c.10 May 1912]
View by appointment

Letter from Vanessa Bell to Duncan Grant

Vanessa Bell, recipient: Duncan Grant
[c.15 May 1912]
View by appointment

Letter from Vanessa Bell to Duncan Grant

Vanessa Bell, recipient: Duncan Grant
8 August 1912
View by appointment

Letter from Vanessa Bell to Duncan Grant

Vanessa Bell, recipient: Duncan Grant
[c.1 September 1912]
View by appointment

Letter from Vanessa Bell to Duncan Grant

Vanessa Bell, recipient: Duncan Grant
[c.1912]
View by appointment

Letter from Vanessa Bell to Duncan Grant

Vanessa Bell, recipient: Duncan Grant
[c.14 January 1913]
View by appointment

Letter from Vanessa Bell to Duncan Grant

Vanessa Bell, recipient: Duncan Grant
[c.14 January 1913]
View by appointment

Letter from Vanessa Bell to Duncan Grant

Vanessa Bell, recipient: Duncan Grant
[29 September 1913]
View by appointment

Letter from Vanessa Bell to Duncan Grant

Vanessa Bell, recipient: Duncan Grant
[30 November 1913]
View by appointment

Letter from Vanessa Bell to Duncan Grant

Vanessa Bell, recipient: Duncan Grant
[c.5 December 1913]
View by appointment

Letter from Vanessa Bell to Duncan Grant

Vanessa Bell, recipient: Duncan Grant
[c.14 January 1914]
View by appointment

Letter from Vanessa Bell to Duncan Grant

Vanessa Bell, recipient: Duncan Grant
[c.17 February 1914]
View by appointment

Letter from Vanessa Bell to Duncan Grant

Vanessa Bell, recipient: Duncan Grant
[c.25 February 1914]
View by appointment
Artwork
Close

Join in

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • YouTube
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
Sign up to emails

Sign up to emails

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Tate’s privacy policy

About

  • About us
  • Our collection
  • Terms and copyright
  • Governance
  • Picture library
  • ARTIST ROOMS
  • Tate Kids

Support

  • Tate Collective
  • Members
  • Patrons
  • Donate
  • Corporate
  • My account
  • Press
  • Jobs
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Cookies
  • Contact
© The Board of Trustees of the Tate Gallery, 2025
All rights reserved