Sketches In Pen and Ink

By Vanessa Bell

Book Overview

Vanessa Bell artist sister of Virginia Woolf wife of Clive Bell and lover of Duncan Grant is one of the most fascinating and modern figures of the Bloomsbury set but unlike most of them she rarely put pen to writing paper. When she did she was witty and illuminating about their early lives. The eldest of the Stephen family she grew up with Virginia in Victorian gloom at Hyde Park Gate and later blossomed in bohemian style in Bloomsbury. From the twenties to the forties she lived and painted at Charleston Farmhouse like a heroine of the sixties and seventies at the centre of a colourful world of family friends artists and intellectuals. Sketches in Pen and Ink is a unique collection of largely unpublished memoirs - most of them written to be read at meetings of the Memoir club in which Vanessa writes with wit and charm about herself her childhood her remarkable family and friends her moving relationship with Roger Fry and her art. Her daughter Angelica Garnett has written a vivid and personal introduction which adds considerably to our understanding of this extraordinary woman and artist.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0712666036
• ISBN13: 9780712666039
• Release Date: November 1998
• Publisher: Pimlico
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.79 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.3" x 0.8" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

Worth getting to know

Having first discovered Vanessa Bell through an interest in her sister, Virginia Woolf, I consider myself entirely unqualified to judge her status as a painter. The woman who emerges from these short pieces, however, is witty, honest, and deeply intelligent. The memoirs of her childhood, which comprise the first three selections, are filled with humor and warmth, with the sharper side of her wit directed chiefly at her elder half-brother, George Duckworth. George is also the primary subject of the fourth essay, and it says much of Bell's writing that he comes across as ludicrous (at best) and yet utterly believable. The remaining memoirs are more generous and less acerbic, particularly one about Bell's friend and former lover Roger Fry, recalling the ways in which their love converged with the expansion and evolution of Vanessa's painting. The portrait of Fry is that of a kind, open-handed man, brilliant as a teacher if not as a painter; Vanessa, despite being "not a writer," manages to convey deep emotion with dignity and a wonderful lack of sentimentality.Perhaps my favorite piece is the final one, a lecture Vanessa gave to students at her son's school. In addition to being hugely amusing, it's one of the clearest and least pretentious discussions I've yet seen on what it means to be a painter.Read this book--not for the sake of Bloomsbury hype, or for the gossip-value of Bell's unconventional personal life; read it because she was an exceptional woman and artist in her own right and this is as close as we can come now to knowing her.