Bloomsbury Group

The Bloomsburys  were an impressive and talented  group of English writers and artists whose ideas about Edwardian/Victorian society differed greatly from their conservative countrymen.  They were advocates of having a variety of  sexual partners and were  very accepting  of homosexuality. 

It all started in Cambridge when Clive Bell (below) met Lytton Strachey and  Thorby Stephen, whose sisters were Virginia and Vanessa.  

Clive Bell-1881-1964,  married  Vanessa, Virginia's Woolf's sister. Although his wife lived with the artist Duncan Grant most of her married life, Clive and Vanessa  never divorced. They often vacationed together.Though he studied history he was an art connoisseur and wrote that "there is no state of mind more excellent or more intense than the state of aesthetic contemplation." 

Self portrait by  Duncan Grant-1885-1978 

 The Memoir Club c.1943  (60.8 x 81.6 cm)

Oil on canvas, National Portrait Gallery, London

Bloomsbury Group painting by Vanessa Bell

 Roger Fry-1866-1934) Painter and Scholar of Art. Self portrait. He became Vanessa Bell's lover and was devastated when she went to live with the artist Duncan Grant. Virginia Woolf wrote in her biography that, "He had more knowledge of experience than the rest of us put together."
He became the curator of European Art at the N.Y Metropolitan Museum of Art -1906-1910. When he became acquainted with Gaughin's work his interest in the modern movement changed him for life. 

This is a funny portrait showing all the different relationships as to who was sleeping with whom. It was hard to keep up.

Top left: Harold Nicolson, Vanessa Bell, Leonard Woolf. Second row: Vita Sackville West, Virginia Woolf. Third row: Clive Bell (bald), Virginia Woolf's brother, Adrian Stephen and  Lytton Strachey (beard) Fourth row: Roger Fry, Ottoline Morrell, Dora Carrington, Mark Butler. Bottom row: Duncan Grant, Violet , Ralph Morrison, Katherine Mansfield

The group start with those who met at Cambridge and then included relatives and friends, but as years passed and members died, the group changed. When WWII began and many were conscientious objectors they were mocked for their intellectual elitism. They were interesting and gifted to be sure and to this day there is controversy about them because of their views. None can deny they each were  interesting and each were  gifted as writers, critics, artists, thinkers and that it would have been a hell of an experience to have sat next to them in a compartment on a British train.