TUESDAY 7 JULY 2026
VANESSA BELL’S ART AND HER TANGLED BLOOMSBURY GROUP
PRESENTED BY RAYMOND WARBURTON
Vanessa Bell was a founding and leading member of the Bloomsbury Group. Over her lifetime, she produced some of the most important art of the 20th century. Despite her artistic achievements, and despite being the ‘matriarch’ of the Bloomsbury Group, her art and biography are often overshadowed by the international renown of Roger Fry (her lover), by the cutting-edge art theory of Clive Bell (her husband), by the paintings of Duncan Grant (her soul mate) and by the books of Virginia Woolf (her sister).
Ray has had a life-long love of art. However, in his twenties, Ray studied social sciences at the London School of Economics and the School of Oriental and African Studies. These studies led to a career in health and social care, with art being an evening and weekend passion. But all that changed in 2011, when Ray became a guide at Tate Britain and Tate Modern. Then from 2014 to 2017, he studied art history at the Open University, and then at the University of Buckingham, from where he gained an MA in the History of Art. And to cap it all, Ray became an Arts Society lecturer in 2017. Ray also knows what it’s like to be on the receiving end of lectures as he is a member of his local Arts Society in Blackheath.