The interiors of Charleston: the house the Bloomsbury Group turned in to a living work of art

'It will be an odd life, but…it ought to be a good one for painting,' the artist Vanessa Bell said of Charleston, the Sussex farmhouse that in 1916 became a focal point for the Bloomsbury Group; that amorphous circle of writers, intellectuals and artists who lived and worked in Bloomsbury before the First World War and beyond.

The writer Dorothy Parker is said to have quipped that the 'Bloomsbury paints in circles, lives in squares and loves in triangles.' A perfect summation when attempting to describe the beyond complicated living situation of Charleston's custodians.

Wikipedia sums it up pretty succinctly:

"Artist Vanessa Bell married art critic Clive Bell in 1907 and they had two sons, Julian (who died in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War at the age of 29 and Quentin (the artist and potter). The couple had an open marriage, both taking lovers throughout their lives. Bell had affairs with art critic Roger Fry and with the painter Duncan Grant, with whom she had a daughter, Angelica in 1918, whom Clive Bell raised as his own child."

Vanessa, the sister of the writer Virginia Woolf, first rented the brick farmhouse in 1916 with her lover and fellow artist Duncan Grant, where they remained until Vanessa's death in 1961 and Duncan's in 1978. The first two years of residency were spent there with Grant's other lover, the writer David "Bunny" Garnett.

Following the outbreak of World War I, the two men, both committed pacifists, worked the land as an alternative to military service. The group wanted to define a new way of living, free from the constrictions of Edwardian society, and their art - inspired by Italian fresco painting and the Post-Impressionists - was to become a platform for their ideals, and their defining legacy.

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Almost as soon as Vanessa and Duncan moved into Charleston, they began to paint, not just on canvas, but over every available surface - walls, of course, but also tables, chairs, bedheads and bookcases; all glowed with swirls and spirals of colour and pattern, full of life and vitality, that was as far from the conservative, conventional interior decoration of the time as it was possible to be.

Charleston's walled garden was created to designs by Roger Fry - a summer playground made for inspiring painting, where classical sculpture sat shoulder-to-shoulder with life-size works by Quentin Bell, mosaic pavements and tile edged pools.

'The house seems full of young people in very high spirits, laughing a great deal at their own jokes...lying about in the garden which is simply a dithering blaze of flowers and butterflies and apples,' wrote Vanessa in 1936. Indeed over the next sixty years the house would become a magnet for the intellectual avant-garde.

The house is now a museum and gallery, but has suffered due to the closures imposed by the coronavirus lockdown. An independent charitable trust with no public funding, the house relies on ticket and shop sales, as well as its cafe and events programme for income. The crisis also coincided with Charleston’s main fundraiser – its annual literary festival in May, a flagship event that has been running for over 30 years. Nathaniel describes the cancellation of the 10-day festival as ‘absolutely crippling’, although some talks are still running this week online here. You can help Charleston by donating to their emergency appeal here, or by heading over to the charity auction hosted on Emily Maude's Instagram page here. Artists and makers including Bridie Hall, Wallace Sewell, Molly Mahon and Monika Forsberg have contributed pieces to the auction, making it a stylish way to help out the trust.

charleston.org.uk