Analysis of Vanessa Bell's Paintings

Vanessa Bell was a British artist known for her post-impressionist paintings which emphasised bold shapes with pronounced brushstrokes and lush colours, Vanessa Bell was a part of a circle of artists, writers, and intellectuals that included her sister Virginia Woolf, their brother Thoby Stephen, Clive Bell, Leonard Woolf, Lytton Strachey, and Saxon Sydney-Turner, among others. In the early 19th century, the Bloomsbury Group played a crucial role in the development of modern art by caring for and supporting young artists. Vanessa Bell was one to observe and try to reconstruct the idea of form and what counts as modernism.

According to Formalism, art is fully determined by its form, with a focus on composition (colour, line, shape, texture) rather than expression or narrative. Post-modernism on the other hand is more of an artistic movement, responding to Modernism.       Bell's paintings show how modernism can be used to give dignity to the representation of women in art. Her semi-abstract paintings and designs are interesting both stylistically and in their innovative qualities, and her figurative works, especially those depicting women, are captivating in their content. To understand Vanessa Bells’ idea of modernism and advanced view of form we will analyse and contextualize 1913, Vanessa Bell’s Seated Figure, and 1912, Studland Beach.

Vanessa Bell’s painting ‘Seated Figure’ shows a woman clasping her knees, what is so striking about this picture is the dichotomy. This image shows strong values of colour, centring around a woman within a tent.  Vanessa abstractly shows this, using the golden triangle rule. Using triangles to guide the eye to 3 separate points, Bell composed the figure centre of the canvas, her lower back, feet, and the top of her head extended out to complete the first notable triangle within the work.  The girl seems to be sitting outside a tent, but in the same way, the convergence of the lines was an understanding of what was going on in the contemporary art on the continent during the period of Cubism and Futurism. She simplified the human figure to their flattened pictorial space and used strong values of paint to create patterns of shapes. 

 Painted the same year by Vanessa Belle, co-founder of the Omega workshop, this unusual and experimental image ‘Seated Figure’ can be considered an important work in the artist's early work and has recently become the basis of Bell's work. It was included in the exhibition at the Dulwich Art Gallery in 1912. The painting can be considered the defining work of this early period in Bell's career and therefore plays an important role in the historical narrative of the Bloomsbury group during its most influential years.

Studland Beach, painted in 1912, displays two women sitting with their backs to the viewer and looking out at the water. A woman in a blue dress stands by the water in front of a white tent, while four figures, probably children, sit at her feet. As is often the case, when choosing her subjects, Bell drew on her own life experiences. The setting for this work, a beach in Dorset, England, was a popular vacation spot for Bell and her family when she was painting this piece. Bell's creative mastery is evident in this painting.                                

She uses a modern approach to colour and shape, similar to Gauguin and Matisse. Above all, the bold placement of the tent's white vertical structure contrasts the diagonal between the deep blue water and warm tones of the beach and gives the figures an enduring weight through the simplification of the contours. It is one of several paintings by Bell that feature women as subjects. While the women in the foreground are having a quiet conversation, Bell pervades the entire scene with loneliness and isolation, perhaps a commentary on her own socially reserved personality. 

Sometimes women with hidden faces were seen in her paintings, but here we do not see any faces. In addition, the tent serves as a changing room for women to put on their bathing suits and separates them from other beach-goers.

Vanessa Bell’s Studland Beach, is indeed a striking, spare and reticent image, but not perhaps fully accountable in these terms.  Tickner further explains that this image was part of a studio picture at the time and was a fundamentally simple piece. It is purely aesthetic in terms of story, spirit, or situation details.

Vanessa Bell's painting Studland Beach, painted around 1912, shows the achievements of British Post-Impressionism in arranging colour planes and balancing two groups of figures visible only from the back. The painting highlights what Bell Clive's husband called "significant form."  The figures in the left front plane of the canvas seem to observe those in the upper right corner, noting the act of perception associated with the painting. All characters are turned away from the viewer, oriented, like the picture itself, towards the sea. 

Bell did it with a "seated figure" using the same technique. A woman in a blue dress and four children were placed in a triangular composition, with the first two women placed in the left front plane. They are placed inside the triangle. Bell shows repetition throughout her work.

Bell synthesized the techniques and explorations of post-impressionist artists such as Cezanne, Matisse, and Gauguin to create contemporary compositions with bold shapes and colours. She simplified human figures into their component shapes, smoothed out the space of the picture, and used rich colours to pattern objects and shapes, creating images that were some of the most radical in Britain at the time. As an innovator in the development of abstract painting, Bell wandered around various subjects and blurred the lines between visual and decorative arts. Although she is not strictly modernist, her posture speaks to the anti-authoritarian stance that undermines the boundaries and boundaries expected by contemporary artists.

Vanessa Bell contribution to the idea of modernism and the understanding of simplistic form, formed the understanding of advancement with painting. Even as Bell creates new forms of painting and expression, she still uses key composition guidelines throughout her work. ‘Seated Figure’ and ‘Studland Beach’ both hold key elements of colour values and figurative form. Bell’s bold colours, the female figure representation and stylistic features create the idea of modern art. Vanessa Bell was truly one to observe and try to reconstruct the idea of form and what counts as modernism.