One of the first things you see if you visit a brilliant new exhibition at Milton Keynes Gallery, 'Vanessa Bell: A World of Form and Colour', is a small paper mosaic. Surprising! Vanessa Bell (1879-1961) is known for her versatility - she produced paintings, ceramics, decorative furniture, carpets, wall-hangings and embroideries - both under her own steam and as part of the Omega Workshops, a cooperative founded by artist and critic Roger Fry to help his hard-pressed Bloomsbury friends to monetise their talents for design and decorative painting. Bell also used numerous different practical and artistic skills at her own home; aided and abetted by the family and friends who came and went at her farmhouse, Charleston, in the lee of the Sussex Downs, she painted every flat surface with bold naturalistic and abstract motifs, sculpted, sewed and embroidered. She did not make mosaics (at least not in anything other than paper), but this exhibition shows that they were on her mind.
Vanessa Bell and Roger Fry had been Bloomsbury friends since 1906 but became romantically involved in 1911 when he nursed her in the aftermath of a miscarriage. The following year he again supported her while she recovered from a bout of measles in a Milan pensione. He attempted to divert her and raise her spirits by providing her with coloured papers to experiment with; she cut them into small rectangles and made paper mosaics like the one which starts the exhibition. It is a rare survival and, to my mind at least, it isn't hugely successful, but it was a first attempt and of course she was ill, so let's hold off on the judgement - and the colour combinations and andamento around the womens' heads as they lean to tend to a child are certainly nicely done.
Bell's life was about to change dramatically. Some time in 1911 or 1912 she met Duncan Grant, who was to be one of the loves of her life and a profound artistic influence.
Bell painted this picture in 1912, using a Spanish model hired by Grant. There's a good reason that this outfit may seem familiar; it is based on that of the Empress Theodora in the famous 6th century mosaic at San Vitale in Ravenna. Bell and Grant visited Ravenna and admired the mosaics early on in their relationship.
By the time 'Byzantina Lady' was painted, Bell and Grant's personal and artistic lives had become entwined to the extent that Roger Fry wrote, rather forlornly, 'In painting, Nessa and Duncan have taken to working so entirely altogether and do not want me{...} I find it difficult to take a place on the outside of the circle instead of being, as I once was, rather central.'
Bell's many fabric and tapestry designs show a strong interest in using areas of distinct colour to describe shapes and to create mood. She even comments specifically on how thinking in these terms (so helpful to us when planning mosaic), was informing her painting. After their romantic relationship ended, Bell was still in contact with Roger Fry, collaborating with him at Omega, and writing to him outlining her ideas and hopes for her work; perhaps some consolation to him for their lost intimacy. She discusses progress on this picture of her sons with their nurses, saying, 'I am just in an exciting stage as I flatter myself that I'm painting in an entirely new way... I am trying to paint as if I were mosaicing, not by painting in spots, but by considering the picture as patches, each of which has to be filled by one definite space of colour, as one has to do with mosaic..., and not allowing myself to brush the patches into each other.' She was apparently most pleased with the colour combination she used for her son Quentin, on the left of the picture, with orange hair and bright pink outfit. What a pity she didn't try real mosaic...
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