Bloomsbury Group Celebrated in New Exhibition Including Rarely Seen Virginia Woolf Gift
Vanessa Bell, The Party or Mrs Dalloway's Party
The Bloomsbury group circle of writers, intellectuals, and artists is the focus of new collaboration between Sotheby's and Charleston, the creatives' rural retreat in Sussex.
Sotheby’s will host Radical Modernity: From Bloomsbury to Charleston, a private selling and loan exhibition on view November 9-26 with its biannual Modern British & Irish Art auction on November 14.
Charleston was the home and studio of painters Vanessa Bell (Virginia Woolf's sister) and Duncan Grant and the hub around which many of the early 20th century’s greatest minds gravitated - a number of works by both artists will be on show. It is now the custodian of a world-leading Bloomsbury collection and as part of the exhibition, Charleston will be loaning some of its most significant pieces, many not usually on public view.
"The Bloomsbury group were a reaction against Victorian Britain, and I love the way they shook things up," said Kim Jones, Artistic Director of Dior Men and Fendi Womenswear and Couture, and Vice President of Charleston, "changing the way people dress and think like the Beats or the Punks."
John Maynard Keynes, one of the most influential economists of modern times, had a room at Charleston where he stayed at weekends. In a painting on show by Duncan Grant from 1917 Keynes is pictured sittng in Charleston’s walled garden, deeply engrossed in his writing,
Also on show is Vanessa Bell’s The Party which has always remained in private hands, having first been gifted to her sister Virginia Woolf, from whose estate it was sold to playwright Howard Ginsberg more than 40 years ago. Painted in 1920, it is evocative of the extravagant and liberal parties of 1920s Bloomsbury and was initially simply titled The Party. When it reemerged in 1983 it became known as Mrs Dalloway’s Party, echoing Woolf’s most famous novel, Mrs Dalloway (the preliminary title of which was The Party), published in 1925, for which Bell had created the cover art.
