Vanessa Bell

A biography of Vanesa Bell, sister of Viriginia Woolf and wife of Clive Bell, profiles this talented and successful artist who led a passionate and unconventional life among the writers and artists of Bloomsbury

Biographies & Memoirs

SPALDING, Frances

Memoirs

Harcourt

This book is about a shared journey made by John and Myfanwy Piper who early on settled down in a small hamlet on the edge of the Chilterns, whence they proceeded to produce work which placed them centre stage in the cultural landscape of the twentieth century. Here, too, they fed and entertained many visitors, among them Kenneth Clark, John Betjeman, Osbert Lancaster, Benjamin Britten, and the Queen Mother. Their creative partnership encompasses not only a long marriage and numerous private and professional vicissitudes, but also a genuine legacy of lasting achievements in the visual arts, literature and music. Frances Spalding also sheds new light on the story of British art in the 1930s. In the middle of this decade John Piper and Myfanwy Evans (they did not marry until 1937) were at the forefront of avant-garde activities in England, Myfanwy editing the most advanced art magazine of the day and John working alongside Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, and others. But as the decade progressed and the political situation in Europe worsened, they changed their allegiances, John Piper investigating in his art a sense of place, belonging, history, memory, and the nature of national identity, all issues that are very much to the fore in today's world. Myfanwy Piper is best known as 'Golden Myfanwy', Betjeman's muse and for her work as librettist with Benjamin Britten. John Piper was an extraordinarily prolific artist in many media, his fertile career stretching over six decades and involving him in many changes of style. Having been an abstract painter in the 1930s, he became best known for his landscapes and architectural scenes in a romantic style. This core interest, in the English and Welsh landscape and the built environment, developed in him a sensibility that took in almost everything, from gin palaces to painted quoins, from ruined cottages to country houses, from Victorian shop fronts to what is nowadays called industrial archeology. His capacious and divided sensibility made him defender of many aspects of the English landscape and the built environment, while in his art he became an heir of that great tradition encompassing Wordsworth and Blake, Turner, Ruskin, and Samuel Palmer. He was torn between the pleasures of an abstract language liberated from time and place and those embedded in the locale, in buildings, geography, and history. Today, this expansive contradictoriness seems quintessentially modern, his divided response finding an echo in our own ambivalence towards modernity. Both Pipers created what seemed to many observers an ideal way of life, involving children, friendships, good food, humour, the pleasures of a garden, work, and creativity. Running through their lives is a fertile tension between a commitment to the new and a desire to reinvigorate certain native traditions. This tension produced work that is passionate and experimental. 'Only those who live most vividly in the present', John Russell observed of John and Myfanwy Piper, 'deserve to inherit the past'.

John Piper, Myfanwy Piper

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press

Art historian Frances Spalding here provides an exuberant and richly illustrated dual biography of John Piper--one of the best loved and capacious English artists--and his wife the librettist Myfanwy Piper, collaborator with Benjamin Britten. Together they stood at the heart of the English cultural landscape of the mid-20th century. Drawing on substantial original research, including many interviews with those who had either known or worked with the Pipers, Spalding's biography sheds new light on the story of British art in the 1930s. In the middle of this decade, the Pipers were at the forefront of avant-garde activities in England, with Myfanwy editing the most advanced art magazine of the day and John working alongside Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, and others. The book contains 80 color and 80 black-and-white plates, and also presents a wealth of information on the major commissions of John Piper's lengthy career as well as his work in print-making, stained glass, illustration, theatre design, and fireworks. And it illuminates Myfanwy Piper's collaborations with the composers Benjamin Britten and Alun Hoddinott, and her role as Betjeman's muse.

John Piper, Myfanwy Piper: Lives in Art

This book is about a shared journey made by John and Myfanwy Piper who early on settled down in a small hamlet on the edge of the Chilterns, whence they proceeded to produce work which placed them centre stage in the cultural landscape of the twentieth century. Here, too, they fed and entertained many visitors, among them Kenneth Clark, John Betjeman, Osbert Lancaster, Benjamin Britten, and the Queen Mother. Their creative partnership encompasses not only a long marriage and numerous private and professional vicissitudes, but also a genuine legacy of lasting achievements in the visual arts, literature and music. Frances Spalding also sheds new light on the story of British art in the 1930s. In the middle of this decade John Piper and Myfanwy Evans (they did not marry until 1937) were at the forefront of avant-garde activities in England, Myfanwy editing the most advanced art magazine of the day and John working alongside Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, and others. But as the decade progressed and the political situation in Europe worsened, they changed their allegiances, John Piper investigating in his art a sense of place, belonging, history, memory, and the nature of national identity, all issues that are very much to the fore in today's world. Myfanwy Piper is best known as 'Golden Myfanwy', Betjeman's muse and for her work as librettist with Benjamin Britten. John Piper was an extraordinarily prolific artist in many media, his fertile career stretching over six decades and involving him in many changes of style. Having been an abstract painter in the 1930s, he became best known for his landscapes and architectural scenes in a romantic style. This core interest, in the English and Welsh landscape and the built environment, developed in him a sensibility that took in almost everything, from gin palaces to painted quoins, from ruined cottages to country houses, from Victorian shop fronts to what is nowadays called industrial archeology. His capacious and divided sensibility made him defender of many aspects of the English landscape and the built environment, while in his art he became an heir of that great tradition encompassing Wordsworth and Blake, Turner, Ruskin, and Samuel Palmer. He was torn between the pleasures of an abstract language liberated from time and place and those embedded in the locale, in buildings, geography, and history. Today, this expansive contradictoriness seems quintessentially modern, his divided response finding an echo in our own ambivalence towards modernity. Both Pipers created what seemed to many observers an ideal way of life, involving children, friendships, good food, humour, the pleasures of a garden, work, and creativity. Running through their lives is a fertile tension between a commitment to the new and a desire to reinvigorate certain native traditions. This tension produced work that is passionate and experimental. 'Only those who live most vividly in the present', John Russell observed of John and Myfanwy Piper, 'deserve to inherit the past'.

Physical description; xvi, 304 p : ill ; port ; 26cm. Subject; Fry, Roger Eliot 1866-1934.

Roger Fry, art and life

Granada Publishing

Vanessa Bell was a central figure within the Bloomsbury Groupand lent to it a stability and coherence it might otherwise havelacked. A talented artist, she held sway with her acuity, integrityand a sense of humour. Yet she remained inscrutable, glimpsesof her life only appearing through her sister, Virginia Woolf.Â In this authorised biography, Frances Spalding draws upon amass of unpublished documents to reveal Vanessa Bellâ€™s considerableachievements, in both her art and her increasingly unorthodoxlife. A sympathetic account is given of her marriage toClive Bell, her affair with Roger Fry and the complex nature ofher lasting relationship with Duncan Grant. It is a fitting tributeto a woman of great paradox, wit and honesty.

Arts & Literature

Weidenfeld and Nicolson

John Minton was an artist, a Bohemian and, in his own lifetime, a myth: "the embodiment and symbol", according to one of his contemporaries, "of a particular decade of London life and London painting". During the 1940s and early 1950s he became a well-known figure in Soho, and an intimate friend of, among many others, Michael Ayrton, Robert Colquhoun, Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud. This biography by Frances Spalding, the author of the biographies of Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell and Stevie Smith, makes use of hitherto unpublished sources, including letters and articles by Minton himself, as well as countless interviews with the artist's friends and acquaintances. Since the revival of interest in British neo-romanticism Minton's reputation has been very much in the ascendant and he is steadily emerging as one of the most fascinating artists of his generation.

Dance Till the Stars Come Down: A Biography of John Minton

Hodder&Stoughton

Spalding reveals and explores the intimate relationship between the course of Stevie Smith's life and the evolution of her art, into which she assimilated not simply the events and emotions of her private life, but the influences on her imagination of her wide and varied reading. Photos.

Stevie Smith: A Biography

W.W. Norton & Co., Inc.

An overview tracing the development of British art and examining the careers of influential artists such as John Singer Sargent, Vanessa Bell, and David Hockney.

British Art Since 1900 (World of Art)

Thames&Hudson

A fresh look at a period of English art that has surged in interest and popularity in recent years, authored by one of Britain’s leading art historians and critics. 
The twenty-first century has seen a surge of interest in English art of the interwar years. High-profile exhibitions have attracted record-breaking visitor numbers and challenged received opinion. In The Real and the Romantic, Frances Spalding takes a fresh and timely look at this rich period in English art. 
The devastation of World War I left the art world decentered and directionless. This book is about its recovery. Spalding explores how exciting new ideas coexisted with a desire for continuity and a renewed interest in the past. We see the challenge to English artists represented by Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso, and the role played by museums and galleries in this period. Women artists, writers, and curators contributed to the emergence of a new avant-garde. The English landscape was revisited in modern terms. 
The 1930s marked a high point in the history of modernism in Britain, but the mood darkened with the prospect of a return to war. The former advance toward abstraction and internationalism was replaced by a renewed concern with history, place, memory, and a sense of belonging. Native traditions were revived in modern terms but in ways that also let in the past. Surrealism further disturbed the ascetic purity of high modernism and fed into the British love of the strange. 
Throughout these years, the pursuit of “the real” was set against, and sometimes merged with, an inclination towards the “romantic,” as English artists sought to respond to their subjects and their times. 147 illustrations

The Real and the Romantic: English Art Between Two World Wars

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Books by SPALDING, Frances

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by SPALDING, Frances. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Vanessa Bell

John Piper, Myfanwy Piper

John Piper, Myfanwy Piper: Lives in Art

John Piper, Myfanwy Piper: Lives in Art

Roger Fry, art and life

Vanessa Bell

Dance Till the Stars Come Down: A Biography of John Minton

Stevie Smith: A Biography

British Art Since 1900 (World of Art)

The Real and the Romantic: English Art Between Two World Wars