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| The Room with a View 1919 |
This picture, radiant with light and joy, was painted by Duncan Grant (1885--1978), in the first spring following the Armistice. More intimately--and directly-- it celebrates baby Angelica's survival. Shown here with her mother in the garden beyond the studio, Angelica, who was born on Christmas day, had been sickly but now robust good health had come at last. It is one of 30 paintings now on display at Charleston Farmhouse in East Sussex (until 23 March). They revisit Grant's first ever one- person show at the Paterson-Carfex Gallery in London and mark its centenary. (It is in fact a centenary +1 as a result of pandemic restrictions.). If asked the well worn if somewhat lamebrained question: "What work would you take home if you could?" I would shoot back: "The Room with a View." In a beat I would have second thoughts: The idyllic vision that draws me to the picture is part of what makes it, also disturbing.
We now, what those who visited the Paterson-Carfex in Old Bond Street more than 100 years ago did not, that the artist was in fact the father of that baby girl. He had had a brief affair with her painter mother, Vanessa Bell, shown here holding the infant on her lap. Mom was married to the art critic Clive Bell; Grant's lover was the writer David Garnett. All lived together at the remote farmhouse during the war, Vanessa did not tell her daughter the name of her biological father until Angelica was in her late teens and then added that it was best not to discuss this with either of her dads. Evidently she kept her mouth shut. At 23, Angelica married David Garnett. No one chose mention that he and her father had been lovers and, indeed had been lovers at the time she was born. Let's leave the saga here with an "etc. etc."
It is not hard to imagine that Duncan Grant chose the title for this painting as a reference to EM Forster's "A Room with a View." That novel published 11 years earlier was like a loosening of moral corset stays; encouraging people to freely follow their feelings; their desires-- whatever the wishes of those close to them; whatever the gender of the person to whom they were attracted. The household that went on to become famous as Bloomsberries, certainly gave that a go.
Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant painted the rooms of Charleston and much of its furniture; fabrics were designed for Roger Fry's Omega Workshops The 48 "Famous women," dinner plates painted by Bell and Grant to a commission from Kenneth Clark have now come back to Charleston and serve as an engaging welcoming committee to visitors entering the house. Who the artists chose and how they chose to paint the portraits gives the onlooker plenty to think about that happily has nothing to do with the myth of their carryings on in and out of bed. The farmhouse has been tenderly looked after and even for somebody (me! who does not fancy a house decorated with Bloomsberry tablecloths and a ceramic colander as a kitchen lamp (the work of Quentin Bell), it is a lovely place to visit.
Their emotional and sexual relationships-- tangled and deceitful to themselves and one another-- have become more famous than the works of the artists and writers who made their home at Charleston Farmhouse. Indeed interest in their carryings on has helped keep their works alive. That is not a bad thing. I am very glad to have gone to this Duncan Grant centenary exhibition and especially to have met "The Room with a View." I am charmed by Charleston Farmbouse. The cafe has very nice food. I enjoyed myself --even the cows I saw from the train window looked delightful. Yet I came home feeling that, individually and collectively, whatever their artistic gifts, these Bloomsberries were coated in something sticky and not beautfully scented.
It may be a cheap shot; it may be a non sequitur. but I can't not end without this: Vanessa's sister and near neighbor Virginia Woolf always gives me the impression that she would recoil if someone reached out and touched her. Rodmell, over the downs, where she lived with her husband Leonard, is quite nice to visit but in itself it would not mean much had it not been the home of one of the great 20th century writers. It is her work that drives interest in her life; not the other way around. But no, this is not a advertisement for repression. Just one of those curious facts of life or lives.
