Byzantine Lady
Oil on composite paper board
1912-
About the work
- Location
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Country: UK
City: London
Place: Government Art Collection
In a letter (6 June 1912) to artist-critic, Roger Fry, Bell described a technique she was experimenting with:
‘I am trying to paint as if I were mosaicing, not by painting in spots, but by considering the picture as patches each of which has to be filled by the definite space of colours as one has to do with mosaic or woolwork …’.
This followed a visit to the Church of San Vitale in Ravenna earlier that year, where Bell and Grant enjoyed the beautiful sixth-century mosaic of Empress Theodora, wife of Emperor Justinian. The ‘Byzantine’ style became increasingly fashionable in Europe and America by the early 1900s. In 1884, actress Sarah Bernhardt had revived the role of Theodora in Byzantine dress; and performances by the Ballets Russes, founded by Diaghilev in 1909, influenced fashion and painting.The lobby of the Woolworth Building (1914), New York’s first modern skyscraper, also reflected the Byzantine style. -
About the artist
Vanessa Bell painted and carried out decorative commissions throughout her life, designing fabrics, cushion covers, book jackets and interiors. Like her sister the writer Virginia Woolf, she belonged to the circle known as the Bloomsbury Group which included Clive Bell, whom she married in 1907. Bell worked for the Omega Workshops, an association of artists/craftsmen active from 1913 to 1919. She was also involved in the decorative work at Charleston Farmhouse near Lewes in Sussex. Now open to the public, this was Bell’s home until her death in 1961. Bell and Grant’s paintings were greatly influenced by exhibitions of Post-Impressionist art in London in 1910 and 1912, in which works by Cézanne, Picasso, Van Gogh and Gauguin were shown.
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Explore
- People
- unknown woman
- Places
- Subjects
- female portrait, Bloomsbury Group, woman, 20th century costume
- Materials & Techniques
- board, oil, oil painting
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Details
- Artist
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Vanessa Bell (1879 - 1961)
- Title
- Byzantine Lady
- Date
- 1912
- Medium
- Oil on composite paper board
- Dimensions
- height: 72.00 cm, width: 51.50 cm
- Acquisition
- Purchased from the Fine Art Society, July 1977
- Inscription
- none
- Provenance
- With Anthony d'Offay Ltd., London; from whom purchased by the Fine Art Society, London, in July 1977; from whom purchased by the Department of the Environment in July 1977
- GAC number
- 13349