Duncan Grant

A key member of the Bloomsbury Group, painter Duncan Grant is one of the leading artists in early 20th-century England. He exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1926, 1932, and 1940, and was the subject of two retrospectives at the Tate in 1959 and 1975. Grant spent his early childhood in India and Burma where his father was stationed, returning to England in 1894 and later enrolling at the Westminster School of Art. During trips to Paris at the start of the 1900s, he studied under Jacques-Émile Blanche and met Gertrude Stein and Henri Matisse. Grant was drawn to the French Post-Impressionists, particularly Cézanne, whose style—along with that of fellow London painter Roger Fry—influenced his still lifes, portraits, and landscapes. He was among the first British artists to paint in a purely abstract style. His longtime relationship with painter Vanessa Bell, who was married to critic Clive Bell, was typical of the Bloomsbury circle’s bohemian romantic entanglements.