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This Museum Is Searching for Lost Artworks by Members of the Bloomsbury Group

From Smithsonian Magazine (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/charleston-museum-searching-for-bloomsbury-group-art-180983610/ (opens in a new window))

Charleston (opens in a new window) is a farmhouse in East Sussex, England, that was once a gathering place for the Bloomsbury group (opens in a new window), a collective of early 20th-century British artists, writers and thinkers such as Virginia Woolf (opens in a new window), Lytton Strachey (opens in a new window) and Roger Fry (opens in a new window).

The house, now preserved as a museum (opens in a new window), has been maintained by the Charleston Trust since 1980. Ahead of the charity’s 50th anniversary, which will take place in 2030, officials have announced a new multi-year initiative titled “50 for 50 (opens in a new window).”

“We are launching a search for 50 of the most significant Bloomsbury group works still held in private collections,” says the museum in a statement (opens in a new window).

Officials are kicking off the project at this month’s London Art Fair (opens in a new window), where existing artworks in the collection—some newly acquired—are on display. The museum’s collection “includes work by some of the most significant modern British artists of the early 20th century,” Sarah Monk (opens in a new window), the fair’s director, tells Artnet (opens in a new window)’s Holly Black. “Charleston is a deeply inspiring place with a history as colorful as the hand-painted wallpapers and furnishings that surround you. It’s a history which has huge resonances with what we equally look to create with the fair, as a meeting place for artists, writers and thinkers to celebrate art and ideas.”

Vanessa Bell's portrait of Virginia Woolf (1934) The Charleston Trust

Artists Duncan Grant (opens in a new window) and Vanessa Bell (opens in a new window) (Woolf’s sister) moved to Charleston in 1916. They lived in the house with Grant’s lover, David Garnett (opens in a new window), and Bell’s two children. Grant and Garnett were conscientious objectors to World War I (opens in a new window), and moving to the farmhouse allowed them to avoid conscription by engaging in agricultural work.

They decorated the bohemian haven in an eclectic, colorful style (opens in a new window), complete with a walled garden (opens in a new window) filled with flowers and gravel pathways. In this setting, members of the Bloomsbury group lived free from strict Victorian social expectations, famously rejecting traditional notions of gender, sexuality, monogamy and more.

“They had money and privilege, but they rebelled against their Victorian forefathers. They imagined society differently and created revolutions in art and culture,” Nathaniel Hepburn (opens in a new window), Charleston’s director, tells the Guardian (opens in a new window)’s Harriet Sherwood. “A hundred years later, they are still inspiring people to think that society can be different, whether artistically, sexually, politically.”

Hepburn hopes the “50 for 50” initiative will inspire those with a Bloomsbury work in their home to come forward and gift it to the museum. It has already acquired about a dozen pieces, including Bell’s The Cloak (1912), which a visitor to the museum recently donated.

Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell's The Famous Women Dinner Service (1932-1934) The Charleston Trust

“The best discoveries are the people who have paintings which have been in the family for a number of generations, but have never been publicly displayed or reproduced in books,” says Hepburn to Artnet.

In addition to The Cloak, paintings by Grant, Fry and Simon Bussy (opens in a new window) are on view at the London Art Fair.

Hepburn tells the Guardian that Bloomsbury works are valuable—and when they go up for sale, “they are highly sought after and well beyond the means of a small charity.” With a lead time of six years, however, he’s optimistic that more individuals will choose to donate their art. Additionally, the project could help locate missing works that have been lost to history.

“There are … plenty of paintings that we don’t know where they are,” adds Hepburn. “There are extraordinary works still out there to be discovered.”