Charleston: The Bloomsbury Muse

Interesting online lecture from London Art Week looking at the Bloomsbury Group and the importance of Charleston Farmhouse to them.

This talk brought together Darren Clarke from Charleston Trust and Lawrence Hendra, head of research at Philip Mould & Co to talk about the art of Bloomsbury and the current exhibitions at their respective galleries and was ably chaired by Janet Hardie of Bonhams. 

Clarke outlined who the group were and the role of Charleston in their work while Hendra took us through some of the works in his exhibition and their role in the story. As you’ll know if you read my blog I am a huge Bloomsbury fan and had already done both these super shows so I didn’t learn a lot from the talk however it was nice to hear the work discussed but two such knowledgeable speakers.

One idea which came up in the Q&A was the idea that Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell were working on the murals for Berwick church which resemble a pageant as Virginia Woolf was writing her last book “Between the Acts” about a pageant. I’ll have to think about that one a bit more!

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