Vanessa Bell

Provenance:
The Artist's Estate
Anthony d'Offay, London
Purchased from the above, 1983

Exhibited:
New York, Davis & Long, in association with Anthony d'Offay, Ltd., Vanessa Bell: A Retrospective Exhibition, April 18 - May 24, 1980, p. 31, no. 43

Vanessa Bell was one of the most celebrated painters of the Bloomsbury Group, an association of British writers, intellectuals, philosophers, and artists that formed in the early 20th century. The group included her sister, Virginia Woolf, as well as E.M. Forster, John Maynard Keynes, and Lytton Strachey. During her lifetime, Bell exhibited in London and Paris and was praised for her work and designs that rejected Victorian strictures of narrative painting, and instead embraced bright colors and bold forms.

In addition to her painting, Bell collaborated with Duncan Grant, a fellow Bloomsbury Group artist, to create set designs for theatrical and dance productions. On the recommendation of Grant, in 1932, Bell was asked to design the set for High Yellow. Produced for the Camargo Society, the ballet is set to jazz music and takes place on a tropical island. The present work, a curtain design for the ballet, reveals the artist's innovative use of flat fields of bold shapes done in vibrant hues to create a lively and vivid image. In a letter to Roger Fry, Bell described how much she enjoyed this new challenge of creating a tropical scene complete with palms, boats, and a cocktail bar. Although she modestly described her set as being “quite successful,” she was invited to do several more in subsequent years.