Duncan Grant 1885-1978

Painted in April-May 1915 at the Sussex country home of St John and Mary Hutchinson in West Wittering. Depicting Vanessa at the age of 36, a year before their move into Charleston, Grant's distinctly Post-Impressionist portrait reflects the colourful existence of their later life together as well as the European influences which Grant, Bell and the Bloomsbury circle did so much to popularise in the immediate aftermath of Roger Fry's groundbreaking exhibitions at the Grafton Galleries.

Portraits of friends and artistic contemporaries are a central theme in the work of both Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell in the years leading up to 1920. Following a practice established by the likes of Matisse and Picasso, these informal, non-commissioned works became the vehicle for much of the artists' most experimental work, and show the way in which they were adapting modernist practices to their own needs. In the present work, the moulding of the face and arms in flat planes of intense colour refer immediately to Fauvist practices, while the way in which the background has been divided into horizontal strips of brilliant colour allude to Grant's concurrent forays into pure abstraction as well his geometric design projects for the Omega workshops.

The immediacy of the handling and the kaleidoscopic colour also resonate with the personality of his sitter. Rarely a wearer of make-up or fashionable clothes and a formidable figure to many, Bell was nevertheless an undeniably sensual presence. As her brother-in-law Leonard Woolf later recorded, she was 'usually more beautiful than Virginia, the form of her features was more perfect, her eyes bigger and better, her complexion more glowing... in her thirties [she] had something of the physical splendour which Adonis must have seen when goddess suddenly stood before him' (Beginning Again, 1964, p.27). Though Grant was to embark on numerous affairs, his relationship with Vanessa was one that would endure a life-time and, in 1918, produce a daughter, Angelica. Sharing a love of colour, light and the languid, Bohemian lifestyle, Grant and Bell remained devoted to one another, establishing at the ongoing creative project that was Charleston, a home and country meeting place for their artist and intellectual friends, and nursing one another through their various ills, physical and emotional, until the latter's death in 1961.

Other portraits of Vanessa Bell painted by Grant during their stay at West Wittering in 1915 include Vanessa Bell Painting (Coll. Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh) and and Vanessa Bell at Eleanor (Coll. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven).