Webbready

Eight years and one day ago, I wrote the following entry in my journal while in London. I warn any reader that this entry comprises horribly inaccurate assumptions and analyses of the Bloomsbury group, and I make no effort to clean up the inaccuracies within my words.

Januray 16, 2000

Today we went to the Tate Gallery, meaning that we had to use a different route than normal. As a group we went to Euston Station, a station slightly closer than the Russell Square station.  After catching the Tube to Pimlico we took a short walk to the Tate Gallery.  There were no information filled commentaries today; instead we entered the gallery and after a few minutes, received our tickets to enter the Bloomsbury exhibit.

Of the three artists — Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell, and Roger Fry — whose works were on display, I shall devote a section of this entry for each.

Roger Fry

Fry, of all the artists had the fewest paintings on display, although this may be because he is not merely a painter but an art critic as well.  Most of his landscape paintings are relatively simple in color and in detail, with large, thick lines as borders, at least Studland Bay (Black Sea Coast) had this last feature…

Vanessa Bell

Like Grant and Fry, for most of her earlier works she uses thick lines and tends to stay within those lines.  She tends to simplify everything in these paintings, with Studland Beach a perfect example of this.  Features, faces, or details of any kind are non-existent in these paintings.  Her collages as well are not as detailed as Grant’s, as a quick comparison of of her Still Life on Corner of a Mantelpiece and Grant’s The Mantelpiece would make clear.  While Grant does not go into small detail, he gives every object a sense of importance by giving it features.  The mantelpiece, for instance, is not a flat board but a piece of wood with some design on it.  Bell’s mantelpiece and other objects are as flat and least distinctive as possible.

This is not to say that she is incapable of detailed works.  In Triple Alliance, a collage representing the Triple Entente of Britain, France, and Russia, she uses all sorts of different types of paper, giving the collage more detail than found in any of her earlier, unfinished works.  Her later paintings also show more depth, volume, size constancy, and lighting techniques than before.  By the time she painted Still Life with Jug, she had grown out of the simplicity of her earlier work.

Duncan Grant

At first, Grant seems to have a “traditional” style, but tended to paint in a manner that suggested he finished his works in a hurry.  Brush strokes, fast and furious, can easily be found in some of the paintings, such as Parrot Tulips, or even in his Study for Composition (Self-Portrait in a Turban). After these paintings, he began to dabble in impressionism.  Two works that have many similar attributes are The Queen of Sheba and On the Roof, 38 Brunswick Square.  Both are highly colorful and instead of filling the lines of the paintings with strokes, all color is done in dots.  Shading, lighting and tone are all done with the stab of the brush.  Of course, the palette has a very wide range, causing both paintings to be rich in color.  There are differences, though few they are.  The “dots” in On the Roof are larger, and there is less detail in general.  Also, Grant also covers the thick lines in this painting with dots.

Like Bell, his sketches and later portraits also “tone down” quite a bit; gone are the portraits of Davis Garnett where both the skin and air are made of highly different colors.  The Mantelpiece at Charleston shows how far he had come, as well as many different portraits he painted in his later years. While the paintings begin to show much more detail, they are as every bit as colorful.

Lastly, I want to touch upon Dora Carringston, who only had one work, a portrait of E.M. Foster.  The painting shown is done in more of a conventional style than most of the Bloomsbury group. In terms of color, it is not as vivid as those of Grant, Fry, or Bell, but the portrait itself is still excellent.

After finishing with the Bloomsbury exhibit, I left the Tate Gallery, as it was too late to do anything else for the day.  I enjoyed the excursion, though, and found it an excellent way to spend a Sunday afternoon.