Charleston: A Bloomsbury House & Garden

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Set in the heart of the Sussex Downs, Charleston Farmhouse is the most important remaining example of Bloomsbury decorative style, created by the painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. Quentin Bell, the younger son of Clive and Vanessa Bell, and his daughter Virghinia Nicholson, tell the story of this unique house, linking it with some of the leading cultural figures who were invited there, including Vanessa’s sister Virginia Woolf, the writer Lytton Strachey, the economist Maynard Keynes and the art critic Roger Fry. The house and garden are portrayed through Alen MacWeeney’s atmostpheric photographs; pictures from Vanessa Bell’s family album convey the flavour of the household in its heyday.

From the Publisher

Clive Bell’S Study

Roger Fry’s ingenious hearth design now contains a primitive electric fire. The armchairs either side of the fireplace are, on the left, an antique French chair upholstered in a fabric entitled ‘West Wind’, designed by Duncan, while the one on the right is covered in ‘Abstract’, designed by Vanessa. Both fabrics were printed in 1931, but these are Laura Ashley reproductions. The bookcases mainly contain Clive’s collection of art books. Above the one on the left hangs Duncan’s 1959 painting of Charleston’s farm buildings. Clive (aged twenty-seven) surveys the room from above the right-hand bookcase in a pencil portrait by Henry Lamb of 1908. The central canvas is Still Life with a Bookcase, painted by Duncan in 1919.

The two panels of the door to the study were decorated by Duncan at different dates, the lower panel having been smashed by Julian and Quentin when they used the room as a schoolroom. The upper panel dates from around 1917 and incorporates motifs from the house at that time. Duncan painted the acrobat below in 1958. To the right of the door stands a large Provençal cherry-wood cupboard, c. 1780; on it stands a weathered plaster cast of a Classical head, recovered from the garden wall. Many of the poetry books on the shelves to the left of the door belonged to Julian Bell and were brought back from Cambridge by him.

The nineteenth-century Italian gilt mirror in the hall reflects a view of Clive’s study through the open door. On the mantelshelf, behind the plaster figure, a black-andwhite photograph is the only reminder at Charleston of Duncan’s Poussin landscape, which he bought in Paris for £40. (Clive told people, ‘We think it is by one of the many artists called Millet.’) Its true worth was not recognized until Anthony Blunt identified it in 1964. He bought the picture from Duncan, who was perennially hard-up, though years later, rather to Duncan’s chagrin, sold it on to the National Gallery of Montreal for a much larger sum.

The Studios

In later years, the studio doubled as Duncan’s sitting room, being one of the warmest rooms in the house, for the Pither stove was far more efficient than the radiators which were installed in 1939; here his visitors always found something new and exciting to look at, the colours and shapes of its numerous exotic objects and images forming a remarkable harmony. The armchair beside the fire is protected from draughts by the screen placed behind it, which was decorated by Duncan in the 1930s. The armchair has a bedspread flung over it, and the cushion cover is made up – probably by Vanessa – from a French provincial cotton printed square.

The large mirror reflects Duncan’s Male Nude, c. 1934. The pine cupboard was decorated by Richard Shone in about 1968. On it stands a smaller cupboard, whose open doors reveal the figures of Adam and Eve painted by Duncan in 1913. The plaster cast of a head on top of the cupboard was rescued from the garden wall. In the foreground is a gramophone decorated by Vanessa in 1932. The decorative drug jar is probably southern Italian.

Reflected in the gilt mirror is the Dutch walnut glass-fronted cabinet which was one of a pair that once belonged to the novelist WM. Thackeray; Vanessa inherited this piece of furniture from her father, whose first wife had been Thackeray’s younger daughter Minnie. It contains antique glasses and decanters, and an eclectic range of ceramics, from Omega to Delft, some decorated by the Charleston artists, others acquired on their travels.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Frances Lincoln; New edition (September 6, 2018)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 176 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0711239312
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0711239319
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.2 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.95 x 0.7 x 8.65 inches