The following passage is taken from an article titled “British Modernism’s Many Manners” by Steve Moyer (© 2009 Steve Moyer).
- Bloomsbury, the group of innovative
- writers and artists, came out of its
- embryonic phase around 1910 as the
- Victorian era finally expired with
- the funeral of Edward VII. Its
- young mix of writers, thinkers,
- and artists stood at the vanguard
- of a shift in manners away from
- nineteenth-century formality and
- reticence and toward
- twentieth-century candor and
- playfulness. Male and female,
- mostly in their twenties, the
- Bloomsbury lot addressed each
- other by their first names and,
- till the wee hours of the morning,
- reflected on how to
- spend their lives.
- Fascinated by the difference
- between the world of appearances
- and the world of reality, in the
- visual and literary arts, the
- Bloomsberries (as they were
- sometimes called) experimented
- with brush and pen to express
- above all the subjective qualities
- of their work. For the painters,
- who opened themselves up to the currents swirling around on
- the Continent since the final days of
- Impressionism, this translated into
- an emphasis on line, mass, contour,
- and the rhythms they create.
- If any one work by the Bloomsbury
- painters sums up adequately the
- era’s avant-garde break with
- London’s Victorian taste in art, and
- the influence of the French Post-
- Impressionists on British artists, it
- would be Vanessa Bell’s 1915 oil on
- canvas of Mary St. John Hutchinson.
- With arched eyebrow, lips slightly
- pursed, and cool self-assurance,
- Mrs. Hutchinson sits noticing
- something to her left, and the
- viewer, disarmed at first perhaps by
- the flatness of the composition and
- the coarse brushwork, feels as much
- as sees the various tones of the few
- colors in the portrait—ochre, green,
- and pink, and, where the whites of
- the eyes should be, teal.
- The work broke all the reigning
- conventions in British painting.
- Treatment of subject, use of line and
- color, lack of shadowing, and the
- solidness of the background in
- relation to the figure are all in sync
- with the modernist modes that had
- been in style on the Continent,
- most notably in France.
- This English modernism struck a
- chord with American collectors who
- shared Bloomsbury’s rebellious
- streak. They reveled in the rejection
- of Victorian rigidities and embraced
- Bloomsbury’s lightheartedness.
- Inspired by Charleston farmhouse
- (itself an embodiment of
- Bloomsbury art and design
- sensibilities) and the ceramics and
- furniture produced by a Bloomsbury
- offshoot, the Omega Workshops,
- some Americans, before actually
- having the money in hand to collect,
- started copying the effects of
- Bloomsbury in their own homes,
- often painting their own interiors in
- the same unorthodox,
- highly decorative way.
- If Bloomsbury had been an art
- department, Roger Fry would have
- been faculty chairman. Fellow art
- critic Clive Bell called him the most
- open-minded person he had ever
- met. Painter, curator, and instigator,
- Fry studied the sciences at
- Cambridge in the 1880s, developing
- a habit of skepticism that would
- serve him well as he guided painters
- Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant
- toward modernism in the years
- leading up to World War I. While at
- Cambridge, Fry came under the
- influence of philosopher G. E.
- Moore, who helped him and
- subsequently the Bloomsbury
- painters develop their
- aesthetic sense.