Part of the "Character Sketches" series, this title looks at the Bloomsbury Group. The series features compact guides devoted to literary, artistic and historic personalities, circles and themes. They contain portraits in a variety of media, all selected from the National Portrait Gallery's diverse collection. The illustrations are accompanied by substantial and relevant quotations from the works of the people featured, as well as contemporary descriptions and anecdotes from unpublished as well as published source. The books should be of interest to general readers and students alike. Frances Spalding is the author of "Roger Fry: Art and Life", "Vanessa Bell", "Dance Till the Stars Come Down: A Biography of John Minton" and "Duncan Grant".

Traces the development of British art and examines the careers of influential artists such as John Singer Sargent, Vanessa Bell, and David Hockney

Product Description: BRO-DART COVER. 2001 Harvill Press hardcover, 2nd printing. BRITISH import. Frances Spalding (Vanessa Bell: Portrait of a Bloomsbury Artist). In this first full biography, Frances Spalding looks beyond the artist Gwen Raverat's childhood memoir; Period Piece, and creates a fascinating and moving portrait of Charles Darwin's granddaughter...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: John Minton (1917-57) was a successful painter, an admired and influential illustrator and, in his own lifetime, a myth. Minton kept hidden a deep melancholy that eventually led him to take his own life aged thirty-nine. Frances Spalding's sensitive account of Minton's life and work makes use of letters, articles and revue sketches by Minton himself, as well as many interviews with the artist's friends and acquaintances...read more

Product Description: John Piper was one of the leading modernist artists of the twentieth century whose work was not only at the forefront of artistic developments but also appealed very directly to a wide public. Marking the centenary of Piper's birth in 1903, this book dramatically uncovers the various shifts in his early career while working largely on the south coast of England, from a lyrical painterly style and lively use of collage, inspired by Picasso and Braque, into pure abstraction, in keeping with international modernism...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This book is about a shared journey made by John and Myfanwy Piper who early on settled down in a small hamlet on the edge of the Chilterns, whence they proceeded to produce work which placed them centre stage in the cultural landscape of the twentieth century...read more

Product Description: Seventy works from six of the most important and distinctive British artists of the twentieth century, and which accompany an exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Product Description: This book explores the impact of Bloomsbury personalities on each other, as well as their legacy to the 21st century. Frances Spalding presents over twenty fascinating biographies, all of which are illustrated with paintings and intimate photographs created by members of the Group...read more

Product Description: As the 2007 Prunella Clough exhibition at Tate testified, Clough (1919-1999) was one of the best and most original artists to emerge in the second half of the 20th century. This book celebrates her outstanding contribution to British art, providing, for the first time, a comprehensive overview of Prunella Clough's entire career...read more

Traces the career of the nineteenth-century English art critic and painter, who associated with the Bloomsbury group, Picasso, and Bernard Shaw

Spalding reveals and explores the intimate relationship between the course of Stevie Smith's life and the evolution of her art, into which she assimilated not simply the events and emotions of her private life, but the influences on her imagination of her wide and varied reading. Photos.

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Vanessa Bell was a central figure within the Bloomsbury Group and lent to it a stability and coherence it might otherwise have lacked. A talented artist, she held sway with her acuity, integrity and a sense of humour. This biography draws upon documents to reveal Vanessa Bell's achievements, in both her art and her increasingly unorthodox life.

Product Description: Vanessa Bell is central to the history of the Bloomsbury Group, yet until this authorized biography was written, she largely remained a silent and inscrutable figure. Glimpses of her life appeared mainly through her famous sister, Virginia Woolf, whose letters and diaries frequently mentioned her...read more

Product Description: James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) was one of the most original artists of the late 19th-century. Flamboyant dandy and ebullient publicist, friend of Oscar Wilde, Whistler was also a meticulous craftsman dedicated to the perfection of his art...read more