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60  Virginia woolf at monk’s house 3 FIG 3 Bottles on a Table, c. 1915–17, Vanessa Bell (1879–1961), oil on canvas, 81 x 62cm, Monk’s House, East Sussex Photo: © National Trust Images © Estate of Vanessa Bell; courtesy Henrietta Garnett wished: ‘For the first time since I married 1912–28 – sixteen years – I have been spending money […] all this money making originated in a spasm of black despair one night at Rodmell two years ago. I was tossing up and down on those awful waves: when I said I could find a way out. (For part of my misery was the perpetual limitation of everything; no chairs, or beds, no comfort, no beauty; & no freedom to move; all of which I determined there & then to win); And so came, with some argument, even tears one night […] to an agreement with L about sharing money after a certain sum.’7 Money earned from her own books was soon combined with sums obtained through the Hogarth Press as a result of the success of her lover Vita Sackville-West’s novels The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent (1931), which were bestsellers. Some of this was spent on bringing back furniture and ceramics from holidays in France. But more was set aside for direct commissions from her sister: patterns for embroidery that Woolf could work herself; vibrant decorative tiles for fireplaces, depicting lighthouses or flowers; chairs, tables, trays and cabinets, painted in bold colours with abstract patterns or with Woolf’s initials. Bell’s textile designs were used for upholstery, and Woolf also bought ceramics painted with Bell’s designs by Foley or Phyllis Keyes. Writing to Bell in 1929, she reported, ‘Everyone who comes throws up their hands – says where do you get these lovely things?’8 Even before Woolf reached her financial agreement with her husband, Leonard, in 1926, she had always been able to find enough money to buy individual paintings. She was an enthusiastic attendee of Bell’s exhibitions, and the acquisition of nearly every picture now at Monk’s House can be plotted in her letters and diaries. On 17 October 1917, Woolf sped from Richmond to the Mansard Gallery at Heal’s to view the ‘New Movement in Art’ show organised by Roger Fry. There she met Lady Ottoline Morrell and Aldous Huxley: ‘Ottoline was not at her ease; closely buttoned up in black velvet, hat like a parasol, satin collar, pearls, tinted eyelids, & red gold hair [...] Aldous Huxley […] infinitely long & lean, with one opaque white eye; a nice youth.’9 Despite these distractions, Woolf spotted a picture she admired, and later that day she wrote excitedly to Bell, ‘I’ve just been to see the pictures, and to tea with Ottoline and Roger […] I was most impressed by one of yours […] in fact I think you’re about our best painter – such imagination, such a way of seeing, so that the thing seems a beautiful, queer whole.’10 In the end Woolf did not buy the picture she had first noticed – of a ‘brass pot on its side’ – but acquired an equally striking still life, Bottles on a Table (c. 1915–17; Fig. 3).11 Both sisters had been heavily influenced by the landmark Post-Impressionist exhibitions of 1910–12. In contrast to the delicacy of Bell’s earlier paintings, such as Iceland Poppies (c. 1908–9), Bottles on a Table detonates ‘with wild colour and expressive line’.12 The bottles and jug sit uneasily on the slanting red table, the surprisingly solid legs of which dominate the central ground. Woolf’s next acquisition, Apples (first exhibited in 1919; Fig. 4), owes an equal debt to Post-Impressionism. The subject held a special significance for her: in 1918, John Maynard Keynes had bought a Cézanne painting of seven apples, which was displayed triumphantly to an admiring audience at Gordon Square. Both Woolf and Bell were mesmerised by the beauty of the tiny image: ‘We carried it into the next room & Lord! how it showed up the pictures there, as if you put a real stone among sham ones; The canvas of the others seemed scraped with a thin layer of rather cheap paint. The apples positively got redder & rounder & greener.’13 Woolf described how Grant and Bell were fascinated by Cézanne’s technique: ‘it was a question of pure paint or mixed; if pure which colour: emerald or veridian; & then the laying on of the paint; & the time he’d spent,
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Virginia woolf at monk’s house 61 & how he’d altered it. & why, & when he’d painted it.’14 Bell went on to create two versions of her own. The first was exhibited in October 1917, and was much admired by Walter Sickert, who, according to Fry, said ‘he’d rather have her picture of apples than a Chardin’.15 Woolf wanted to buy that picture, but was pipped to the post by Lalla Vandervelde, the wife of the Belgian ambassador to London. Two years later Woolf had her chance – Bell’s second version was exhibited at the November 1919 exhibition of the London Group. The painting survives today in the dining room at Monk’s House: five apples nestle in a blue and white Omega-style bowl. Woolf’s passion for still-life paintings reflected her own joy in arranging objects at Monk’s House. Clive Bell remembered how Woolf had a ‘feeling for textures and the relations of textures. She would pick up a feather in the fields and set it in an appropriate wine-glass against a piece of stuff carelessly pinned to the wall, with the taste and “right-ness” of a Klee, if not a Picasso.’16 In 1929–30 she was able to put these skills to good use: having decided to add two new rooms to Monk’s House, Woolf commissioned two striking sets of tiles from Bell for the fireplaces. Those for the first-floor sitting room depict an overflowing bowl of fruit, with sinuous Arum lilies curling up the side panels. Soon afterwards, Woolf found the perfect picture to hang over the mantel: Bell’s Still Life of a Vase and Vegetables (Fig. 6), exhibited at the Cooling Galleries in February and March 1930. The work was less abstract than Bottles on a Table or Apples; the soft green of the foreground and cool blue of the background would have blended well with the colour palette she had chosen for the new rooms at Monk’s House. According to the catalogue, Woolf found the central ‘white urn’ charged with emotion.17 4 In March 1934, Woolf wrote an introduction to the catalogue for another of Bell’s exhibitions, and acquired a further painting – Jug of Flowers (c. 1933; Fig. 5). The picture shows roses, dahlias and asters arranged in a glass and a blue and white jug. It hangs today in the sitting room at Monk’s House. Woolf attended the private view at the Lefevre Gallery and sent a breathless account to Quentin Bell: ‘Yesterday was a great occasion, Nessa’s private view, she will tell you her part in it, mine is that I was caught by several quite unknown admirers, of hers and yours, who said Oh how lovely, oh that bridge – oh that flower, until I had no tongue to praise with left.’18 The catalogue captures some of her own joy in flowers and flower paintings: ‘Character is colour, and colour is china, and china is music. Greens, blues, reds and purples are here seen making love and war and joining in unexpected combinations of exquisite married bliss […] Flowers toss their heads like proud horses in an Easter festival, In short, precipitated by the swift strokes of the painter’s brush, we have been blown over the boundary to the world where words talk such nonsense that it is better to silence them.’19 Two years later, Woolf acquired another painting with significance to both sisters: Newhaven Harbour (Fig. 7). Painted in 1936, the picture recalls the Channel steamers Woolf and Bell caught with happy regularity to Dieppe at the start of holidays or painting trips to France and Italy. Woolf’s diary is peppered with references to journeys she or others took: Julian Bell left for China via Newhaven; Vita Sackville-West began most of her European holidays there; Woolf herself arranged for furniture bought by Ethel Sands to be delivered by boat there. There is a further link – to a small Matisse of ships in a harbour 5 FIG 4 Apples, c. 1918, Vanessa Bell, oil on canvas, 52 x 44cm, Monk’s House, East Sussex Photo: © National Trust Images © Estate of Vanessa Bell; courtesy Henrietta Garnett FIG 5 Jug of Flowers, c. 1933, Vanessa Bell, oil on canvas, 52 x 44cm, Monk’s House, East Sussex Photo: © National Trust Images © Estate of Vanessa Bell; courtesy Henrietta Garnett

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60  Virginia woolf at monk’s house

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FIG 3 Bottles on a Table, c. 1915–17, Vanessa Bell (1879–1961), oil on canvas, 81 x 62cm, Monk’s House, East Sussex Photo: © National Trust Images © Estate of Vanessa Bell; courtesy Henrietta Garnett wished: ‘For the first time since I married 1912–28 – sixteen years – I have been spending money […] all this money making originated in a spasm of black despair one night at Rodmell two years ago. I was tossing up and down on those awful waves: when I said I could find a way out. (For part of my misery was the perpetual limitation of everything; no chairs, or beds, no comfort, no beauty; & no freedom to move; all of which I determined there & then to win); And so came, with some argument, even tears one night […] to an agreement with L about sharing money after a certain sum.’7

Money earned from her own books was soon combined with sums obtained through the Hogarth Press as a result of the success of her lover Vita Sackville-West’s novels The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent (1931), which were bestsellers. Some of this was spent on bringing back furniture and ceramics from holidays in France. But more was set aside for direct commissions from her sister: patterns for embroidery that Woolf could work herself; vibrant decorative tiles for fireplaces, depicting lighthouses or flowers; chairs, tables, trays and cabinets, painted in bold colours with abstract patterns or with Woolf’s initials. Bell’s textile designs were used for upholstery, and Woolf also bought ceramics painted with Bell’s designs by Foley or Phyllis Keyes. Writing to Bell in 1929, she reported, ‘Everyone who comes throws up their hands – says where do you get these lovely things?’8

Even before Woolf reached her financial agreement with her husband, Leonard, in 1926, she had always been able to find enough money to buy individual paintings. She was an enthusiastic attendee of Bell’s exhibitions, and the acquisition of nearly every picture now at Monk’s House can be plotted in her letters and diaries. On 17 October 1917, Woolf sped from Richmond to the Mansard Gallery at Heal’s to view the ‘New Movement in Art’ show organised by Roger Fry. There she met Lady Ottoline Morrell and Aldous Huxley: ‘Ottoline was not at her ease; closely buttoned up in black velvet, hat like a parasol, satin collar, pearls, tinted eyelids, & red gold hair [...] Aldous Huxley […] infinitely long & lean, with one opaque white eye; a nice youth.’9 Despite these distractions, Woolf spotted a picture she admired, and later that day she wrote excitedly to Bell, ‘I’ve just been to see the pictures, and to tea with Ottoline and Roger […] I was most impressed by one of yours […] in fact I think you’re about our best painter – such imagination, such a way of seeing, so that the thing seems a beautiful, queer whole.’10

In the end Woolf did not buy the picture she had first noticed – of a ‘brass pot on its side’ – but acquired an equally striking still life, Bottles on a Table (c. 1915–17; Fig. 3).11 Both sisters had been heavily influenced by the landmark Post-Impressionist exhibitions of 1910–12. In contrast to the delicacy of Bell’s earlier paintings, such as Iceland Poppies (c. 1908–9), Bottles on a Table detonates ‘with wild colour and expressive line’.12 The bottles and jug sit uneasily on the slanting red table, the surprisingly solid legs of which dominate the central ground. Woolf’s next acquisition, Apples (first exhibited in 1919; Fig. 4), owes an equal debt to Post-Impressionism. The subject held a special significance for her: in 1918, John Maynard Keynes had bought a Cézanne painting of seven apples, which was displayed triumphantly to an admiring audience at Gordon Square. Both Woolf and Bell were mesmerised by the beauty of the tiny image: ‘We carried it into the next room & Lord! how it showed up the pictures there, as if you put a real stone among sham ones; The canvas of the others seemed scraped with a thin layer of rather cheap paint. The apples positively got redder & rounder & greener.’13

Woolf described how Grant and Bell were fascinated by Cézanne’s technique: ‘it was a question of pure paint or mixed; if pure which colour: emerald or veridian; & then the laying on of the paint; & the time he’d spent,

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