Quentin Claudian Stephen Bell (19 August 1910 – 16 December 1996) was an

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

art historian and author.

Early life

Bell was born in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, the son of

Clive Bell Arthur Clive Heward Bell (16 September 1881 – 17 September 1964) was an English art critic, associated with formalism and the Bloomsbury Group. He developed the art theory known as significant form. Biography Origins Bell was born in East ...

and

Vanessa Bell Vanessa Bell (née Stephen; 30 May 1879 – 7 April 1961) was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury Group and the sister of Virginia Woolf (née Stephen). Early life and education Vanessa Stephen was the eld ...

(née Stephen), and the nephew of

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...

(née Stephen). He was educated at the Quaker

Leighton Park School Leighton Park School is a co-educational Independent school (United Kingdom), independent school for both day and boarding pupils in Reading, Berkshire, Reading in South East England. The school's ethos is closely tied to the Quaker values, havin ...

and at

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

Career

After being educated at

and in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

, Bell became a

Lecturer Lecturer is an List of academic ranks, academic rank within many universities, though the meaning of the term varies somewhat from country to country. It generally denotes an academic expert who is hired to teach on a full- or part-time basis. T ...

in Art History at the Department of

Fine Art In European academic traditions, fine art is developed primarily for aesthetics or creative expression, distinguishing it from decorative art or applied art, which also has to serve some practical function, such as pottery or most metalwork ...

, King's College,

University of Durham Durham University (legally the University of Durham) is a collegiate university, collegiate public university, public research university in Durham, England, Durham, England, founded by an Act of Parliament in 1832 and incorporated by royal charte ...

from 1952 to 1959, then became the first

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

of Fine Art at the

University of Leeds , mottoeng = And knowledge will be increased , established = 1831 – Leeds School of Medicine1874 – Yorkshire College of Science1884 - Yorkshire College1887 – affiliated to the federal Victoria University1904 – University of Leeds , ...

from 1959 to 1967. In 1964 he was appointed

Slade Professor of Fine Art The Slade Professorship of Fine Art is the oldest professorship of art and art history at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford and University College, London. History The chairs were founded concurrently in 1869 by a bequest from the art collecto ...

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

and, in 1965, Ferens Professor of Fine Art at the

University of Hull The University of Hull is a public research university in Kingston upon Hull, a city in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It was founded in 1927 as University College Hull. The main university campus is located in Hull and is home to the Hull ...

. Bell was a Professor of Art History and Theory at the

University of Sussex , mottoeng = Be Still and Know , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £14.4 million (2020) , budget = £319.6 million (2019–20) , chancellor = Sanjeev Bhaskar , vice_chancellor = Sasha Roseneil , ...

from 1967 to 1975. He sometimes worked as an artist - principally in ceramics - but for his career he was drawn to academia and to book-writing. Bell's biography of his famous aunt, ''Virginia Woolf: A Biography'', 2 vols (London: Hogarth Press, 1972), won not only the

James Tait Black Memorial Prize The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are literary prizes awarded for literature written in the English language. They, along with the Hawthornden Prize, are Britain's oldest literary awards. Based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, Unit ...

, but also the

Duff Cooper Prize The Duff Cooper Prize is a literary prize awarded annually for the best work of history, biography, political science or occasionally poetry, published in English or French. The prize was established in honour of Duff Cooper, a British diplomat, C ...

and the ''

Yorkshire Post ''The Yorkshire Post'' is a daily broadsheet newspaper, published in Leeds in Yorkshire, England. It primarily covers stories from Yorkshire although its masthead carries the slogan "Yorkshire's National Newspaper". It was previously owned by ...

'' Book of the Year Award. He also wrote several books on the

Bloomsbury Group The Bloomsbury Group—or Bloomsbury Set—was a group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the first half of the 20th century, including Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster and Lytton Strac ...

and

Charleston Farmhouse Charleston, in East Sussex, is a property associated with the Bloomsbury group, that is open to the public. It was the country home of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant and is an example of their decorative style within a domestic context, represen ...

.Essays, Poems and Letters (1938) edited by Quentin Bell

Family

He was married to

Anne Olivier Bell Anne Olivier Bell (née Popham; 22 June 1916 – 18 July 2018) was an English art scholar. She was part of the Bloomsbury Group and best known for editing the diaries of Virginia Woolf. As a member of the ''Monuments Men'', she was responsible ...

(née Popham). They had three children: Julian Bell, an artist and muralist;

Cressida Bell Cressida Bell (born 1959) is an English artist and designer, specializing in textiles, interior design, cake decoration and illustration.Clifton-Mogg, Caroline"Lifestyle - Cressida Bell", '' House & Garden'', July 2010, pp. 62-70. She is the dau ...

, a notable textile designer; and

Virginia Nicholson Virginia Nicholson (née Bell) (born 1955) is an English non-fiction author known for her works of women's history in the first half of the twentieth century. Nicholson was born in Newcastle and grew up in Leeds before becoming a television resea ...

, the writer of ''Charleston: A Bloomsbury House and Garden,'' ''Among the Bohemians'' and ''Singled Out''. Bell had an older brother, the poet

Julian Heward Bell Julian Heward Bell (4 February 1908 – 18 July 1937) was an English poet, and the son of Clive and Vanessa Bell (who was the elder sister of Virginia Woolf). The writer Quentin Bell was his younger brother and the writer and painter Angelica ...

, who died in the Spanish Civil War in 1937. The writer and artist

Angelica Garnett Angelica Vanessa Garnett (née Bell; 25 December 1918 – 4 May 2012), was a British writer, painter and artist. She was the author of the memoir ''Deceived with Kindness'' (1984), an account of her experience growing up at the heart of t ...

was his half-sister, and

Amaryllis ''Amaryllis'' () is the only genus in the subtribe Amaryllidinae (tribe Amaryllideae). It is a small genus of flowering bulbs, with two species. The better known of the two, ''Amaryllis belladonna'', is a native of the Western Cape region of S ...

and

Henrietta Garnett Henrietta Catherine Garnett (15 May 19454 September 2019) was an English writer. Early life and family Garnett was the second of the four daughters of David and Angelica Garnett.James BeecheyHenrietta Garnett obituaryin ''The Guardian'', 18 Sept ...

were his nieces.

Death

Quentin Bell died in

Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English ...

, and is buried in the churchyard of St. Peter's Church,

West Firle Firle (; Sussex dialect: ''Furrel'' ) is a village and civil parish in the Lewes district of East Sussex, England. Firle refers to an old-English/Anglo-Saxon word ''fierol'' meaning overgrown with oak. Although the original division of East ...

, East Sussex.

References

Bibliography

External links

The Quentin Bell Collection at the Victoria University Library at the University of Toronto

"Eminent Charlestonians with illustrations by Quentin Bell and text by Virginia Woolf"
via Discovering Literature at the British Library {{DEFAULTSORT:Bell, Quentin 1910 births 1996 deaths Bloomsbury Group English art historians People educated at Leighton Park School Stephen-Bell family Academics of Durham University James Tait Black Memorial Prize recipients Academics of the University of Leeds Bloomsbury Group biographers 20th-century biographers Slade Professors of Fine Art (University of Oxford) People from Firle