Duncan Grant’s last portrait of Vanessa Bell emerges from family papers
A previously unknown drawing believed to be Duncan Grant’s final portrait of Vanessa Bell has been given to Charleston, adding an unexpectedly intimate work to the record of their long partnership. Discovered among family papers during preparations for Tate Britain’s forthcoming exhibition, the pencil-and-biro study shows Bell lying with her eyes closed, her face seen in profile and slightly from below.
Grant had drawn and painted her for decades. Charleston’s exhibition of his portraits in 2024-25 traced that sustained attention from a pencil study of Bell pregnant with their daughter, Angelica, in 1918 to a charcoal drawing made shortly before her death in 1961. That charcoal had been presented as his last portrait of her. The newly discovered sheet appears to bring the sequence closer still to its end.
Its inscription, however, introduces a small uncertainty. Grant dated it 14 April 1961, a week after Bell’s death and two days after her burial. Darren Clarke, Charleston’s head of collections and research, believes the date was probably added later. In old age, Grant and his friends worked through pictures in the studio, identifying and dating them from memory; their inscriptions were not invariably accurate. Clarke considers the drawing’s viewpoint consistent with Grant sitting beside Bell’s bed. The precise moment remains unresolved.
By then, the two artists had shared much of their working lives. They became co-directors of Roger Fry’s Omega Workshops in 1913 and moved to Charleston in 1916. Angelica was born there two years later. Their partnership accommodated other relationships, separate ambitions and the ordinary adjustments of artists working in close proximity. At one point Bell, concerned that her painting was becoming too like Grant’s, chose to work in another room.
That history gives the portraits their particular interest. Bell was a fellow painter whose judgement mattered to Grant, as well as a familiar presence available to be drawn across the table or in the studio. Seen together, the works allow the changes in her appearance to unfold alongside changes in his handling. This late sheet now asks to be considered within that long exchange, rather than solely as a relic of bereavement.
The drawing will first be displayed at Charleston in May 2027, following documentation and conservation. Although found during preparations for the Tate exhibition, it will not be included in the show itself.
Charleston is an apt place for it to emerge into public view. Bell died there on 7 April 1961; Grant survived her by seventeen years and was eventually buried beside her at Firle. In the house they made together, the drawing will join a much longer record of two artists looking, working and living in one another’s company.
