Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting discussion at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival examining the work of Vanessa Bell. The talk brought together Wendy Hitchmaugh, who had recently released a new biography of Bell focusing on her art as well as her life, and Kate Hessel, author of the successful "The Story of Art Without Men". The event was well chaired by Jon King, research fellow who also has a book on Bell due out in a couple of months. The all highlighted how radical Bell's art was and how she created spaces for people to gather and work together from the house whose garden we were sitting in to important art groups. They also looked at the barriers she faced to working and selling her paintings. Needless to say, if you know me, I bought the biography and got it signed.  

Lovely exhibition at Charleston in Lewes focusing on Vanessa Bell. As you know I’m a big Bloomsbury fan so I was so excited to see this show, which I’d not managed to get to when it was is Milton Keynes, and it didn’t disappoint. I loved that a lot of space was given to Bell’s earlier, groundbreaking work and that a big section looked at her design work. Most of the show was arranged by place, reflecting the importance of place to Bell, plus giving it a rough chronological structure. I liked the mixing of portraits and landscapes as places as are as much about the people in them as the space itself. I found lots of old friends but there was also a great selection of works from private collections and regional galleries. Closes 21 September 2025  

Excellent online lecture from ARTscapades looking at Vanessa Bell’s early Modernist works. I had assumed this would be a standard book talk as the speaker, Wendy Hitchmough, has recently written a biography of Bell but instead she decided to focus on Bell’s early Modernist works and to discuss how radical they were. This made it a lot more interesting and in depth that I had expected. She began by discussing how Bell encountered the Post-Impressionist via helping to organise the 1910 show of their work in London then looked at the effect this art had on her portraits, particularly of her sister, Virginia Woolf. She next focused on three major works “Studland Beach”, “Mother and Baby” (now lost)   and “Nursery Tea” all from 1912 talking about their radical composition and subject matter and how that was informed by Bell’s experience as a woman and mother. She concluded by talking about how Bell created spaces where women could meet and show art such as the Grafton Group and...

Fantastic exhibition at Sotheby’s of art and artefacts by the Bloomsbury Group. As you know I’m a Bloomsbury nut so made sure to see this show curated by fashion designer, Bloomsbury group collector and now vice chairman of the Charleston Trust, Kim Jones. The show has partly been organised to show case the 50 for 50 campaign which aims to have 50 new, important works donated or pledged by the 50th anniversary of the trust in 2030 and the show included one work which has been pledged. There was a room of old friends from Charleston which looked a bit disjointed here. It was very odd to see cupboard doors from the kitchen without the cupboards. However the display worked well and it was nice to be greeted by busts of Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Virginia Woolf. It worked its magic as I overheard two ladies planning a trip down there. The second room was more of a treat as it had works from private collections with some revelations like a dressing gown by Wyndham Lewis, a fun pi...

Interesting lecture at the Garden Museum on the Bloomsbury socialite Ottoline Morrell. The talk was given by Miranda Seymour, whose biography of Morrell has just been republished. She led us though Morrell’s life with an emphasis on her house and garden at Garsington as she had been invited to compliment the current exhibition on female Bloomsbury gardeners. Given the topic it wasn’t a surprise that I bumped into someone I knew.  

Beautiful small exhibition at the Garden Museum looking at the role of garden to the women of the Bloomsbury Group. If you read this blog you’ll know I’m a great Bloomsbury fan so I was excited to see this show and it delivered. It’s only a small exhibition space but it was used well to look at Ottoline Morrell, Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West. It made good use of paintings, particularly in the section on Ottoline where it featured many of the artists who had stayed with her at Garsington. There was also lots of archive material and good use made of books and book covers in Virginia’s section. It would have been nice to have had a small section on the gardens as they are today as at least three of them can still be visited however I think they may have videos online to cover this. If you don’t know the group this would be a nice gentle introduction. Closes 29 September 2024 Review Telegraph

Disappointing exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery of work by Vanessa Bell. I only say disappointing as I wanted more! As anyone who reads me will know I love the work of the Bloomsbury Group so of course I would want more than a small show could offer. The works were drawn from the gallery’s own collection mainly from the donations by Roger Fry and his daughter but it also included a work bought by Samuel Courtauld. There was a nice selection of still-lives and designs for rugs and a screen alongside her early cutting-edge work “The Conversation”. I loved this early still life of the view from Bell’s Paris studio. Closes 6 October 2024  

Fantastic  exhibition at Charleston in Lewes on fashion and the Bloomsbury Group. It went through the main characters looking at the clothes they wore and what those clothes said about them. I loved that it gave equal weight to the men and women as often men get left out of shows about clothes. They made good use of portraits, many of which I’d not see before, as well as their writings. The title is a quote from a letter by Vanessa to a guest meaning they wouldn’t be dressing for dinner. A particularly brilliant loan was some of the wardrobe of Ottolline Morrell from Fashion Museum in Bath. Alongside the history the show also looked at how the group were influencing modern designers with wonderful displays of their work. As I was there on opening night, a number of the designers were in the show standing with their work. I can’t wait to go back on a quieter day and take in more of the detail. Just one moan though,   please can we have bigger typeface on the labels p...

Fabulous new venue in Lewes for the Charleston Trust. I was lucky enough to be invited to the opening party for the venue and it was fascinating to hear how the building had been turned round from old council offices to a great arts space in just 12 weeks. The council still own the building but it includes gallery space curated by Charleston, an outpost of their shop and a café from their wonderful caterers Caccia and Tails. There are ambitious plans to use the space for educational events. There is also going to be a mini bus running between this space, branded Charleston in Lewes, to the house (Charleston in Firle) and the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne. A great new project and I wish it well. It will be good to go and visit at a quieter time to get a clearer view of how it will work. Party night was more about getting your glass of fizz and meeting people.    

Wonderful exhibition at Philip Mould & Co on the sculptor Stephen Tomlin. As a fan of the Bloomsbury Group I had come across Tomlin before but this is the first time so much of his work has been shown together. At first I thought the show was a bit thin with other pictures by the group in the first room to set the scene, a number of which I had seen at the gallery before, but as you go into the second room and turn around it is like walking into a Bloomsbury dinner party. The portrait busts are set on Bloomsbury-esque painted plinths at a height where it is easy to study the details. The commentaries are good but the stylish white on black is hard to read especially when set quite low. It was lovely to see so much from Charleston and it was like bumping into old friends. I think the bust of Bunny Garnett which is usually in the garden has been cleaned for the show. It will be interesting to see it back in situ. Closes 11 August 2023    

Interesting installation at Charleston Farmhouse by contemporary artist Linder bringing together a series of objects alongside new and existing works to create a multi-sensory collage in dialogue with Charleston. Oh dear I didn’t make notes and don’t remember a lot about this show. I think I went in expecting it to be another response to the sister exhibition of Duncan Grant’s erotic drawings so I was a bit confused. Reading the webpage now I’m still a bit confused as it mentioned pieces I don’t remember so I’ll definitely be going back to take another look. What I do remember is a wonderful sense of fun and colour and her black and white collage photographs superimposing items of jewellery no nudes figures. Closes 12 March 2023 Review Guardian  

Thought provoking exhibition at Charleston Farmhouse introducing the recently discovered erotic drawings by Duncan Grant. It was lovely to see these drawings on show at last, they were acquired during lockdown having been passed down through the queer community including during the time when sex between men was still illegal. It was a lovely touch to show them with portraits of the five men who had looked after them. It’s wonderful that they have now come back home to Charleston. Although many of them are explicit because they are so tenderly drawn and have a certain cartoon like quality, they are easy to look at and quite charming.  I liked the idea of showing the work with contemporary responses that Charleston have commissioned but some of these feel a lot harsher and real and so, at times, they are more difficult to look at. The show did raise many questions in my mind which I will continue to explore. Why explicit art in a drawing and photograph can feel so different? W...

Interesting discussion at Charleston Farmhouse about art and life between the two world wars. This event was part of the Charleston Festival with over 40 events over 10 days. I was an all event ticket holder and am proud to say I think I was the only person that actually did all the events! I’m afraid if I blogged them all I’d be here for ever so I’m just blogging any of the events with an art or design theme. It was an exception festival this year, partly due to the joy of it being back in person and I came away brimming with ideas and inspiration. Anyway back to this event which brought together Frances Spalding, talking about her book about the visual arts between the wars, and Nino Strachey, on hers about a new generation of the Bloomsbury Group in the 1920s. The event was chaired by Mark Hussey who write a biography of Clive Bell. We started with a short talk by Spalding with excellent slides which wove the story of the art with what brought her to it. She discussed the ris...

Fabulous exhibition at Philip Mould & Co looking at the art of the Bloomsbury Group and how it was inspired by the house they lived in, Charleston. OK I admit I am biased being a huge Bloomsbury fan as I’m sure I’ve said more than once! I thought this was such a clever idea to treat the house as a muse and a different twist. The works were beautifully displayed with good commentaries and it was nice to watch some of the old archive films from Charleston including interviews with Duncan Grant plus Quentin and Angelica Bell. I expected to see lots of things I knew but was pleasantly surprised at how work there which was here I had not seen before including this wonderful modernist flower painting by Vanessa Bell done in 1912. It was also great to see so much from the house in a different setting which made you look at it with fresh eyes. It was particularly nice to be able to see all four sides of the Leda and the Duck chest. Closes 10 November 2021 Reviews Telegraph E...

C olourful exhibition at Charleston Farmhouse of work by Nina Hamnett. As you walked into the gallery you were hit by these startlingly good, colourful pictures from still-lives to portraits with a fascinating room of drawings. I liked the way the show concentrated Hamnet’s art rather than her also colourful life often defined by her relationships with other people rather than her work. However a bit more background information would have been useful to cut down on the Googling later. I loved her striking portraits particularly those of her landladies including this one. The labels were nicely written and I liked one for one landlady picture which described their relationship as “a gentile war zone”! The middle room was dominated by a wonderful full-length picture of a man in a top hat from 1920. Including the drawings added insight to the paintings. My favourites were portraits of Lytton Strachey achieved in just a few lines. Most surprising were the lovely still liv...

Delightful series of online lectures from Charleston Farmhouse on the Bloomsbury Group telling their story in their own words. Holly Dawson, reader in residence at Charleston, took us through five aspects of the group using their letters, diaries, memoirs and novels to tell their stories, as well as wonderful images from the house’s archives, many of which I hadn’t seen before. The talks were quite long for online, about an hour and 20 minutes, but each was given in the form of an essay on a topic (friendship, love and sex, homes, politics and bodies) and built up a lucid and well thought out narrative through the talk. If you read my blog you’ll realise I’m a great Bloomsbury Group fan it was nice to check in with Holly and her wonderful, healthy cheese plant for an hour so on a Sunday and think about different aspects of this group of friends. The talks will be available online until 14 March 2021, for a small fee, and I highly recommend them if you want to know more about this ...

Fun day at Charleston Farmhouse exploring hidden aspects of LGBT+ history as part of the Outing the Past an international celebration of the subject. I went to three of the talks starting with Jane Traies, telling the story of a possible Lesbian love triangle in Sussex, and not part of the Bloomsbury Group. She was a super speaker leading us to conclusions and them subverting what she’d told us. It was an interesting study in how we often can’t always know people’s stories from the past and whether we should of draw conclusions with modern sensibilities. Next was Andrew Lumsden talking about how the Labouchere family both enable Forster to wrote and held him back. I found this a bit tenuous but still fascinating to learn more about Forster, a regular visitor at Charleston. Finally I went to hear Dan Vo talk about queer curating in museums and galleries. Vo leads queer tours of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum and the National Museum of Wales. He t...

Interesting exhibition at Charleston Farmhouse of works donated to the trust in recent years. This was a great opportunity to see works not usually on show and to find out the stories of the people who had given them. As well as paintings it included drawings and ceramics. It was lovely to see a lovely portrait of Mary Hutchison which used Omega plates as a backdrop shown alongside actual plates donated by her son Jeremy Hutchison. I loved the hanging of these two portraits of Paul Roche, one by Vanessa Bell and the other by Duncan Grant, as the two artists take such a different approach to their pictures. Vanessa seems to paint the person whereas Duncan, Paul’s lover, paints the body. I was fascinated by cartoons drawn by Henry Tonks, the head of the Slade, of some the Bloomsbury Group and a selection of sketchbooks from Duncan and Vanessa, bequeathed by their daughter Angelica Bell. Definitely a show that will merit a second visit. Closes 19 April 2020

Charming exhibition at Charleston Farmhouse looking at the story and work of the Omega Workshop. Founded in 1913 the Omega workshop was the brain child of Roger Fry, inspired by the spirit of Post-Impressionism, who set up a co-operative of artists to bring colour into Edwardian homes and to provide paid work for those designers. Although the workshop only lasted until 1919 it work has had a lasting effect. The show brought together a wonderful array of objects as well as pictures painted at the time or showing Omega items. There was also good use made of archive material. I liked the way it was arranged by type of object so you got a section on rugs as well as a display case of lamps. I think my favourite section looked at furniture as it gave you a real sense of what these rooms would have looked like, although of course you can also go round the house itself to see the effect. A star of the show was a newly acquired portrait of a woman with white Omega plates on the...

Fascinating pairing of speakers at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival looking at peoples’ personal rooms.   Mark Purcell, who had been librarian for the National Trust, talked about country house libraries looking at the both as rooms but also as collections. He had beautiful illustrations and lots of quirky and interesting stories. He talked about rooms which were public spaces but other which were more private which he described in one case as “the Earl’s shed”!   Nina Stratchey then talked about her beautiful book looking at the rooms of Virginia Woolf, Vita Sachville-West and Eddy Sackville-West. Of course this was heaven to a Charleston audience! Although I’ve been to Knole quite often I can’t remember seeing Eddy Sackville-West’s own rooms there and they are so lovely in shades of pink and blue and with a screen by Duncan Grant. She told us how all of the pictures at Monk’s House are described by Virginia in letters and diaries as she a...