Vanessa Bell (1879-1961)

In 1939 an attic room at Charleston was converted into a studio for Vanessa Bell, with the insertion of a wide north-facing window, giving views across the Sussex countryside. She painted here until her death in 1961. Sometimes the view appears in still lifes of objects and flowers placed near or in front of the window; at other times she obviously peered down into the walled garden below (its perimeter wall visible here at the lower edge of the canvas); and sometimes she painted the full panorama, as here. The two elm trees afforded strong verticals at the edge of a composition or bisected it to increase spatial depth. Painting up in the top studio, alone, she was, as her daughter Angelica remarked, 'literally in heaven'.

R.S.