Vanessa Bell and Her Indispensable Housekeeper

On Sunday, Feb. 11, at 2:00 pm at Back Lane Studios, author and professor emerita Janice Kulyk Keefer introduces us to two unusual households belonging to Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf’s older sister, and Bell’s fellow artist and longtime companion, the gay artist Duncan Grant. Bell and her family summered at their Sussex farmhouse, Charleston, and wintered at La Bergère, their villa in Cassis, southern France. Both places were rife with visiting Bloomsbury luminaries, and turbulent with Bell’s three children and their friends.

Keeping everything ticking was housekeeper Grace Germany, shown above in a 1943 painting by Vanessa (inset). Grace, who worked for the family for half a century, adored life in Cassis (and shopping in Paris!); she learned French and delighted in travel. Her employers dubbed her “the angel of Charleston,” especially since, after her marriage to a man denounced as “the Dolt” by the Bloomsberries, she agreed to live with him in a small annex of the farmhouse instead of moving away to set up a home of her own.

To reserve a spot, email us. We ask for a small donation for Janice’s talk.

About Janice:

Over the past few years, Janice has supported many of our events, both in person and on Zoom, with her incredible expertise. During Covid, she presented two lectures on Zoom about Lesya Ukrainka (1871-1913), a billiant writer, poet, feminist and political activist. We also enjoyed her five-part detective fiction series. Janice has also provided her expertise at a number of our Extraordinary Women series, including events about Virginia Woolf, Daphne du Maurier and Agatha Christie.

Janice’s academic focus was on modernist literature, including, of course, the work of Virginia Woolf.

Thank you, Janice, for your incredible support!

A Vanessa Bell/Duncan Grant project

Before Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party, commemorating the lives of 39 extraordinary women through place settings, there were 50 ceramic plates hand painted by Vanessa Bell and Duncan grant, honouring the lives of 48 women. (The last two plates featured the two artists!) The dinner set was commissioned by art historian Kenneth Clark in 1932.

Here’s a description of the women who were chosen, taken from the Charleston website:

“The portraits – subdivided into Women of Letters, Queens, Beauties, and Dancers and Actresses – include George Eliot, Charlotte Brontë, 10th-century Japanese poet Murasaki and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (pictured with her spaniel Flush); the Queen of Sheba and Elizabeth I; Dante’s Beatrice and the pre-Raphaelite Elizabeth Siddal; Greta Garbo and Ellen Terry. Many of these women lead complex and scrutinised lives, resisting marriage in favour of unconventional domestic arrangements and individual freedom.”

Here’s an image of the plates, now at Charleston, taken from the same website: