Vanessa Stephen, the daughter of Leslie Stephen and Julia Princep, was born in 1879. The elder sister of Virginia Woolf, she studied at the Royal Academy (1901-04).

In 1905 Vanessa and several friends and relatives began meeting to discuss literary and artistic issues. The friends, who eventually became known as the Bloomsbury Group, included Vanessa's sister, Virginia Woolf, Clive Bell, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster, Leonard Woolf, Lytton Strachey, David Garnett, Roger Fry and Duncan Grant.

Vanessa married Clive Bell in 1907 but later left him to live with Duncan Grant. Until 1914 Vanessa paintings were fairly conventional. However, after the First World War she emerged as an abstract artist. She joined the London Group in 1919 and exhibited with them regularly. Vanessa Bell died in 1961.

Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell is available from Amazon

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