Correspondence and other papers relating to Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell, Clive Bell,...

The collection includes nearly 2,500 pieces of correspondence between Clive Bell (1881-1964), Vanessa Bell (1879 -1961) and Duncan Grant (1885-1978), over a period of some 55 years. As the key figures in the Bloomsbury Group, these four people constitute a group of central importance in the development of twentieth centurty British Art and taste. Their correspondence traces in detail the development of their own work and their response to the art of others, as well as to other forms of art. The documentation ranges from the minutiae of domestic arrangements and studio practice, to the emergence of widely influential artistic theories. In addition, there are letters from Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, Janie Bussy, Dora Carrington, Augustus John, William Rothenstein, Walter Sickert and Matthew Smith, as well as correspondence between Vanessa Bell and her art school friend, Margery Snowden. The collection of correspondence is supplemented by a small number of writings by Clive Bell and Roger Fry, and a memoir by Duncan Grant about his life in Paris as an art student in 1907. It also contains some photographs and press-cuttings.