Bohemians in squares
In the first half of the 20th century the writers, artists and thinkers of the Bloomsbury Group, which included author and feminist pioneer Virginia Woolf, her sister the post-impressionist painter Vanessa Bell, the novelist EM Forster, the biographer Lytton Strachey and the economist John Maynard Keynes, had a profound and lasting effect on British art, literature and culture. Now their lives, loves and work are being celebrated in a major new exhibition at the Millennium Gallery in Sheffield. Beyond Bloomsbury: Life, Love and Legacy, created in partnership with York Museums Trust and the National Portrait Gallery, brings together over 140 items including paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs and supporting material to celebrate the achievements of the group’s key figures, while also featuring some of their lesser-known peers and reflecting on the collective’s important place in queer art history.
As the renowned American wit Dorothy Parker famously said of the Bloomsbury Group, which was formed in the prosperous and fashionable London district it was named after: “They lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles”. It is a typically astute summary of how they conducted themselves in public and private, with their relationships often intertwined and their creative endeavours overlapping and inspiring each other. Artists Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Roger Fry, for example, often worked together, painting the same subjects including mutual friends, still life studies, and interiors. And the group frequently met to discuss ideas of the day and to critique new work. They rejected the rigid conventions of the Victorian age and led a bohemian lifestyle which included extra-marital romantic liaisons, many
A new exhibition at Sheffield’s Millennium Gallery explores the life, loves and legacy of the famous Bloomsbury Group. Yvette Huddleston goes in search of the bigger picture. Main pictures by James Hardisty.
between same-sex partners, challenging societal norms of the time.
“The Bloomsbury Group made such an important contribution to modern British culture and that can still be felt today,” says Sheffield Museums curatorial assistant Maraiga Bailey who co-curated the exhibition with Becky Gee of York Museums Trust. “Becky came up with the idea as she has been interested in the Bloomsbury Group for a long time and wanted to bring a more critical and inclusive approach to the traditional narratives about them. She reached out to us because Sheffield has a significant number of the group’s artwork in its collection and already has a good relationship with the National Portrait Gallery; then we developed the exhibition together. The Millennium Gallery was chosen to host the exhibition, which will also go to York Art Gallery next spring, because of its interest in craft and design and the Bloomsbury Group were not only an influence on early 20th century art but also on design – some members of the group were interested in bridging the gap between fine art and craft and set up The Omega Workshops.”
The workshops, initiated by Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, were an enterprise selling furniture, fabrics, mosaics, stained glass and household accessories produced by artists. One of the paintings featured in the exhibition The Mat Maker, 1913 by Grant, depicts Bell finishing a rug in preparation for the opening of the workshops. “Although the workshops were not as successful as they had hoped, in terms of trying to bring art and design together, it did have an impact,” says Bailey. “One really important part of the Bloomsbury Group’s legacy is the experimental attitude they brought to art and also how encouraging they were of younger artists by creating this supportive network.”
Apart from the Omega Workshops, there was also the Friday Club, a discussion group set up by Bell in 1906 in which artists could talk about their own work and debate the latest movements and developments in art. “A lot of the younger artists who were involved in the Friday Club and the Omega Workshops, such as Paul Nash and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, went on to become important British artists in their own right,” says Bailey. “And there were some less well-known artists involved like the Chilean painter Alvaro Guevara who was a lover of the poet Edith Sitwell. When Guevara went back to Chile, he was instrumental in introducing modern European art to South America – so the Bloomsbury Group had an international influence.”
Of the 140 pieces on display in the exhibition, around 60 are portraits on loan from the National Portrait Gallery and they perfectly illustrate the interconnectedness of the relationships between key figures in the Bloomsbury
group. “The members of the group sat for each other quite often,” says Bailey. “The portraits are visual records of their intimacy and how well they knew each other – there is a relaxed atmosphere about the paintings and the sitters seem quite comfortable. One of the most interesting portraits is one by Vanessa Bell of the writer David Garnett.” At the time of the painting of the portrait Garnett was living with Bell (who had an open marriage with the art critic Clive
Bell) and her lover the painter Duncan Grant and Garnett was involved with both of them. “Vanessa Bell was jealous of David Garnett as an object of Duncan Grant’s affection and her portrait of him is not very flattering, while Grant’s portrait of Garnett is beautiful,” says Bailey. “Both portraits were painted at the same time and it is interesting to see those emotions playing into the artwork.”
In terms of portraiture technique, the Bloomsbury artists were also breaking new ground. “The way they painted was very different from Victorian methods of portraiture,” says Bailey. “Many of them have a bright colour palette and use techniques such as pointillism and the portraits are more about quiet captured moments than what you would expect to see in more traditional posed portraits.”
Activism was also an important part of the Bloomsbury Group’s ethic – they were involved with the suffragette movement, left-liberal politics and anti-militarism – and they were able to share their ideas more widely after Virginia and Leonard Woolf founded the Hogarth Press publishing house in 1917. “It allowed them to propagate and highlight the causes they believed in,” says Bailey.
Bailey hopes that through the exhibition, more people will become interested in the group. “We have tried to look at them through a contemporary lens and bring in a more diverse element,” she says. “We wanted to make it as inclusive and as accessible to as many people as possible.”
The exhibition also features four new portraits by contemporary Sierra Leonean British
artist Sahara Longe commissioned by Sheffield Museums and York Museums Trust. “Sahara’s work specialises in looking at the bias of portraiture – most portraits are of privileged white men,” says Bailey. “Her practice aims to reinstate Black people and people of colour as subjects for portraiture.” After researching the Bloomsbury Group, Longe selected four figures – dancer and choreographer Berto Pasuka, co-founder of Les Ballets Nègres Europe’s first black dance company, Jamaican-born lawyer and artist’s model Patrick Nelson who often sat for Grant, Indian writer and activist Mulk Raj Anand, a collaborator of the Woolfs at the Hogarth Press, and broadcaster Una Marson, the first Black woman employed by the BBC – who were all associated with the collective but who have been frequently overlooked in the traditional narrative. “Sahara’s work has meant that we have been able to critically engage with that narrative,” says Bailey. “We have been thinking about how and why the Bloomsbury Group were able to do what they did. Most of them came from wealthy families and already had contacts in the art and literary worlds, so while we are celebrating their achievements, we are also acknowledging what enabled them to achieve those things.”
■ At the Millennium Gallery Sheffield, to February 13, 2022. Free entry. It continues at York Art Gallery, March 4-June 5, 2022.