The Nine Ages of Duncan Grant

(NB - I've now been informed that this is not Duncan Grant, so please regard this post as 'The Eight Ages...')

Duncan Grant's career as an artist has been rather overshadowed by his relationship with the Bloomsbury Group, but the Tate Gallery website has a selection of his works here.

A Slightly Spooky Bloomsbury Moment

Last week I wrote this post about a trip to Virginia Woolf's home in Rodmell and almost included this photo of Woolf with her niece, Angelica Bell:

I'd seen a copy of it in Virginia Woolf's writing room and was immediately struck by the image. Apart from being beautifully composed, Angelica is very striking, with a pretty but rather solemn, adolescent face. Apparently she found life in the Bloomsbury Group a bit of a bore when she was young, as there were no other children to play with.

During the visit, I wondered if Angelica was still alive, but after looking at the date of the photo it seemed rather unlikely. The next day, I wrote the blog post and in the end, decided not to use the photo, as there were already more than enough images. Then I forgot all about Angelica Bell.

But today, during a quiet moment this afternoon, I looked up Angelica Bell on Wikipedia and discovered that when I was looking at her photo in the garden she knew so well, she was still alive. Horray! The link with the Bloomsburys, TS Eliot, EM Forster, Lytton Strachey and Keynes wasn't comletely severed.

But then I read on and discovered that sadly, Bell died the following day at the age of 93, just as I was deciding not to include a photo of her in my post. As Dame Edna would say, that's spooky.

Angelica, left, in Charleston

It's too late in the evening for a potted biography of Angelica Bell's bizarre life, but if you don't know how she discovered that her father wasn't her father and ended up marrying his lover, becoming Mrs Anglica Garnett, click here for the Wikipedia entry or here or here for an obituary.

You won't regret it.